The 2024 election can at times feel like it’s taking place on two entirely different planes of existence. These separate realities generally run parallel, never intersecting and only occasional acknowledging each other. But on Tuesday, the two came close enough to offer a view through the looking glass in a way that would disorient anyone who whipped between them.
In Manhattan, it was the 13th day of the first criminal trial of a former president. Donald Trump stands accused of falsifying business records to hide his payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. She claims that she’d had an affair with Trump; he has denied it but wanted to keep the claim under wraps as the 2016 presidential election approached for fear it could deal a lethal blow to his campaign. He sat at the defense table with his lawyers as the woman at the center of the case was sworn in as a witness for the prosecution.
The 2024 election can at times feel like it’s taking place on two entirely different planes of existence.
Smash cut to Washington, where President Joe Biden was arriving at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum annually hosts events to mark the Days of Remembrance, when the memories of the victims of the Nazi’s extermination campaign are brought forward again. Biden was preparing to deliver a major address about antisemitism, as one would expect of a sitting U.S. president — an almost jarring bit of normality during such an abnormal time.
Jump back to New York and Daniels shared with a rapt courtroom details of her time together with Trump. Jurors took notes as she described how Trump first approached her through an aide, inviting her to dinner. She testified that she initially turned him down, but her publicist encouraged her to attend. “It’ll make a great story. He’s a business guy. What could possibly go wrong?” she recalled to silence from the jury and laughter from the court’s overflow room.
Two hundred miles away, Biden was condemning a “ferocious surge in antisemitism in America and around the world” that has escalated since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, which left over 1,000 Israelis dead. “To the Jewish community, I want you to know: I see your fear, your hurt, your pain,” Biden said. “Let me reassure you, as your president, you’re not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will.” The solemn address befit the gravity of the history on display around him and the weight of the crimes carried out against American Jews to this day.
Meanwhile, Daniels moved on to the most scandalous part of the trial’s testimony (though not necessarily the most damaging against Trump). She told the jury about sleeping with Trump. Though prosecutors made no attempt to play up the luridness of her testimony, the salaciousness is inescapable. The interest in Daniels’ time with Trump initially peaked in October 2016, soon after the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape nearly derailed Trump’s campaign. It was then that then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen approached with an offer: $130,000 for the rights to her story — and her silence. Trump would go on to win the election in 2016, having successfully prevented Daniels from speaking out. He reimbursed Cohen, who had taken out a loan for the payoff, in $35,000 installments soon after taking office.
Though prosecutors made no attempt to play up the luridness of her testimony, the salaciousness is inescapable.
Back in Washington, Biden listed the ways his administration is taking action to combat antisemitism. There was an unavoidable political consideration lying beneath the surface of his remarks. The protests on college campuses condemning Israel’s deadly military response to Hamas’ attacks, which have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, have become a potential weak spot for Democrats. Younger Democrats and progressives have decried the harsh crackdowns against demonstrators. Republicans eager to capitalize on liberal discomfort have sought to use the issue as a wedge, even as they’ve shown little interest in countering antisemitism within their own base.
Seven years before Biden’s speech, Trump stood at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he vowed to “confront antisemitism.” It was an effort to seem presidential for a man who struggled to fit the mold from his first day in office. It was also an attempt to clean up a mess from the earliest weeks of his administration, when a statement issued in his name on International Holocaust Remembrance Day did not mention Jews or the causes of the genocide.
That seems like a lifetime ago now as Trump and Biden jostle to serve a second term beginning next year. It is discomforting to have such a visceral contrast between the two of them as was on display Tuesday. It is even more disquieting to realize that for many voters, their eyes refuse to focus in these moments on where the difference is clearest. The rarely overlapping worlds will continue on their separate paths ahead of Election Day, when they will finally converge, creating something altogether new and unpredictable.