Joe Biden has a plan to tackle Donald Trump’s efforts to sow discord: ignore him

Biden’s advisers say there’s little incentive to engage with Trump, and that his penchant for spectacle is wearing thin with Americans

But the president-elect’s strategy to deprive the Republican of attention will likely face frequent and immediate tests

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US President-elect Joe Biden. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:45pm, 3 Jan 2021Updated: 9:44pm, 3 Jan 2021

Joe Biden faces historic challenges when he enters the White House on January 20: a raging pandemic, persistently high unemployment, simmering tensions with China and Russia – and a predecessor who won’t go away.

Aware of the chaos and distraction Donald Trump has proved he can muster, the president-elect and his advisers have developed a strategy they believe is the only way to neutralise the threat: ignore him.

One lesson of Biden’s winning presidential campaign, they say, is that there’s little incentive to engage with Trump, and that his penchant for spectacle is wearing thin with the American people. The tension will reach a head on January 6, when Congress formally ratifies Biden’s victory as Trump’s supporters wage protests both on the streets of Washington, egged on by the president, and within the House and Senate.

Biden has been “adamant that we were not going to get down in the gutter with Donald Trump every day,” said adviser Kate Bedingfield. “That’s not who he is, and that’s not what the American people want to see in a president.”

But the incoming administration is going to have trouble ignoring Trump, who’s poised to remain at least an aggravation to Biden. After refusing to concede defeat and declaring the election he lost to be illegitimate, he’s made clear he doesn’t plan to quietly retire, and has told associates he’ll run for president again in 2024.

For generations, US presidents leaving the office to a successor of the opposition party have yielded power gracefully – even those defeated for re-election after a single term. But Trump’s attitude has set up the most awkward transfer of power in modern history, and threatens to hamstring Biden as he confronts a long list of crises.