Biden’s best way to move on from Trump? Ignore him and his wall

Name: Trump supporters storm US Capitol, interrupting Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory
Uploaded: 2021-01-17T14:00:16.000Z
Duration: 5 min 52 s
Description: Trump supporters storm US Capitol, interrupting Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory

As Trump fights impeachment, he will continue to do what he loves most and does best – dominate the headlines and divert attention from the efforts of others

Justice and decency tell us to prosecute him, but political pragmatism tells Biden to ignore him and focus on the important work of making America great again

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Workers assemble the new bollard wall along the US-Mexico border on the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona on November 1, 2019. For Trump and his supporters, that wall remains at the very heart of his immigration policy and his legacy. Photo: AP

David Dodwell

Published: 10:00pm, 17 Jan 2021Updated: 10:03pm, 17 Jan 2021

I and millions more are counting down the minutes to Wednesday and the inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden when the malignant Trump presidency will splutter to an end. His expulsion from Twitter has already brought a welcome silence and profound relief, but to imagine President Donald Trump’s dreadful legacy will die on January 20 could be wishful thinking and would be a huge mistake.

Even as, beyond Biden’s inauguration, Trump fights impeachment through a complicit Senate, he will continue to do what he loves most and does best – dominate the media headlines and divert oxygen from the efforts and achievements of others.

Just as the incoming Biden administration attempts to focus on the restoration of calm, tackling the country’s worst-ever health crisis and shoring up the livelihoods of millions of Americans whose jobs have been wrecked by pandemic lockdowns, Trump’s impeachment theatre will mesmerise and distract.

The danger is also high that other Trump theatrics will continue in the coming months to divert political attention from the urgent, serious but ultimately unexciting tasks weighing on the Biden administration. Trump’s true legacy might prove to be his infinite capacity for “entertaining distraction” – the daily victory of fact-free theatre over substance.

Even now, two months after his electoral defeat, he continues to stir his credulous supporters with fact-free claims that election fraud on a massive scale somehow stole victory from him.

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Trump supporters storm US Capitol, interrupting Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory

So, too, has he ignored the pandemic that is killing more than 4,000 Americans a day and the millions of jobless families. His only recent public appearances have been to stir an American supremacist horde into storming the Capitol building and to fly down to the Alamo to celebrate his “historic” accomplishment – the Mexico border wall.