As hush-money trial nears end, one side criticizes a ‘clown,’ the other a ‘desperate and pathetic’ incumbent.

Trump supporters gather outside the New York City courthouse where closing arguments were under way in former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial.

Donald Trump’s trial hadn’t yet reached a jury Tuesday morning but a preview of the post-verdict messaging war was already roaring into view with dueling campaign events. President Biden’s re-election team appeared outside the courthouse to blast the former president as a danger to the country, and Trump’s side hammered what it calls a politically biased prosecution. Actor Robert De Niro and two former police officers on duty at the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump’s supporters were featured in the Biden event, which was held across the street from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse where Trump’s hush-money trial is nearing a conclusion.

The event represented a sharp escalation for a Biden campaign that has been reluctant to wade too deeply into the presumptive Republican nominee’s legal problems. Biden is facing a new wave of concern from fellow Democrats about his campaign message, particularly on the economy, as he trails Trump in polls of the swing states likely to decide the election.

Trump campaign officials stood watch on the street corner and immediately held their own news conference. “What you just heard from is a desperate and failing and pathetic campaign who knows that they are losing,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said. “But guess what, the American people see through this witch hunt in this scam and that’s why President Trump continues to rise in the polls.” The back-and-forth heralds an increasingly acerbic phase of a campaign that has turned off many Americans.

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