A Ukraine Clash, A Collision Course

On a hot midsummer morning in Indianapolis, Joe Biden took the stage at a Democratic presidential candidates’ forum and turned his attention toward Russian election interference.

Biden assailed President Donald Trump for having said he would accept help from a foreign government. “It is outrageous, it is un-American, and it’s close to treasonous,” the former vice president thundered.

Little did he know at the time that Trump is alleged to have done just that — asking Ukraine to help him dig up dirt on Biden himself.

About an hour before Biden addressed the National Urban League, Trump had ended his now-infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he asked Zelensky to open an investigation into alleged corruption by Biden and his son Hunter.

“It sounds horrible to me,” Trump said, referring to the Bidens.

The events that morning — separated by an hour on the clock and nearly 600 miles on the map — rose out of a monthslong fixation that each man had with the other, putting their respective orbits on a collision course and imperiling their 2020 ambitions.

The extraordinary five months since then have brought into fresh relief the extent to which Trump would go to target Biden, seemingly unable to resist endangering his presidency by pursuing the falsehoods and conspiracy theories that appear to have consumed him.

“Some days it literally does shock me that the only reason Donald Trump is embroiled in this impeachment inquiry is because of the actions he took trying to take down an opponent in the race,” said Symone Sanders, a senior Biden campaign adviser. “That’s what the impetus was. Donald Trump only did it because of Joe Biden.”

The clash marks the first major engagement between the two possible presidential rivals, providing a potential preview of a 2020 contest that is likely to be conducted without the traditional guardrails that limited past campaigns.

From the point of view of the Biden camp, the former vice president has shown his ability to stand toe to toe with Trump. With about a month to go before the first votes in the Democratic primary, Biden has remained at the head of the field in most public polls.

But Trump’s defenders believe Biden has been badly damaged by the questions they have raised about his involvement in Ukraine, arguing he has been redefined as a compromised politician rather than the partner of a popular former president.

The dynamic has also thrust Biden’s relationship with his troubled son into public view — highlighting a painful, messy chapter for which he has provided no easy answers.

Biden launched his candidacy by decrying Trump’s immorality, inviting the president’s wrath as a strategy to stand out in the crowded primary field and cast himself as the all-but-presumptive nominee. But he and his advisers did not foresee the degree to which Trump would demonize Biden and his family, nor that it would boomerang back on the campaign with unpredictable consequences.

“Trump’s attacking Biden is a double-edged sword,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who works for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “On the one side, it hurts and raises Biden’s negatives. On the other side, it puts him on the same level as the president of the United States, and that would help him inside his primary if he were saying something strategic to capitalize on it.”

Trump advisers saw the Hunter story as Biden’s soft underbelly — an easy vulnerability for Trump to exploit in a way that they hope redefines him. “Joe Biden is now viewed more as Hunter’s father than Obama’s vice president,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president.

For Trump, his fixation on Biden set him on a path to becoming the third U.S. president in history to be impeached and to face trial in the Senate. Trump’s preoccupation also showcases his appetite for unfounded conspiracies, as well as his eagerness to crash through the traditional safeguards that otherwise might have contained his more dangerous or self-sabotaging instincts.

In Biden, Trump and his allies saw a political threat — a Democrat with blue-collar bona fides who could cut into the president’s winning coalition of working-class whites.

Many in Trump’s orbit say that although they most feared Biden in theory, as soon as “Sleepy Joe” — as the president dubbed him — entered the race, he quickly lost some of his luster amid stumbles and a sense that he was not the nimble politician he had once been.

Yet Trump’s focus on Biden persisted, they said, borne out of the president’s obsession with the 2016 election and its aftermath. While he had been the subject of what he called myriad “witch hunt” investigations — from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference to probes of his family’s businesses — he felt others, such as Biden, were getting a pass.

Hunter Biden had served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, and pocketed a large salary while his father was vice president. Although there is no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Biden, Trump viewed the situation as a double standard.

As Biden began planning his presidential campaign, his advisers decided on an approach that was different from most of his rivals. They wanted to goad Trump from the start — to start a primary campaign that instead felt like the general election.

Biden’s aides were initially taken aback — and delighted — by how much Trump played into their strategy. After one of Biden’s first speeches, in a union hall in Pittsburgh where he got the endorsement of the International Association of Fire Fighters, Trump began retweeting messages from random firefighters who did not support Biden.

Biden was almost giddy. “I understand the president’s been tweeting a lot about me this morning. I wonder why the hell he’s doing that?” he said in Iowa City. “I’m going to be the object of his attention for a while, folks.”

Sanders, of the Biden campaign, said: “We knew he was obsessed when he wouldn’t stop tweeting. It was apparent very early that the VP occupied a lot of real estate in Donald Trump’s head.”

After a summer that largely turned inward, as Biden fought less with Trump and more with his fellow Democrats, the return of Trump’s focus came with a bang: news of a whistle-blower’s report alleging that Trump had asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and had tied up foreign aid.

Even for a campaign that was built to focus on Trump, and a candidate who had said he was prepared for any dirty tactics the president might bring, they were in disbelief. In part because they wanted firm confirmation of the allegations, campaign officials were slow to respond — “It was too crazy to be real,” in the words of one Biden adviser — and Biden was reluctant to comment initially, simply saying that he did nothing wrong and neither did Hunter.

Realizing that the campaign was at risk of losing the battle of public perception, top advisers started pushing back more aggressively, sending out mass emails challenging reports and reporters — they viewed as unfair.

Biden was angry. On a call with senior staff the next morning, he said that he wanted to make the point that Trump was afraid of him, but also that he was furious about the abuse of power. Biden chided a Fox reporter for asking about him about Hunter, saying “Ask the right question!” He also said that Trump was scared because he would “beat him like a drum.”

Trump allies say Biden didn’t occupy space so much in the president’s head as he did on his Twitter feed and television screen, and they argued that many of his attacks were ones of opportunity rising out of media reports on Biden and his son.

While Biden aides point to his resiliency under repeated attacks from Trump and his fellow Democrats, some Trump allies worry that the president and his team have not adjusted to the reality that Biden is not a sure bet for the nomination. Some inside and outside the administration say Trump’s team should be turning its focus to other Democrats surging now, or those who could have a breakout moment and prove tough to beat in the general election.

Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, responded to this critique in an email: “We have never been convinced that Joe Biden would be the eventual Democrat nominee. It’s just that he presents such irresistible opportunities for criticism and mockery.”