Joe Biden faces historic challenges when he enters the White House on Jan. 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 neutralize 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 Jan. 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.