Biden has spent his presidency painting Trump as abnormal – but his recent antics prove it’s the other way around

Ever since Donald Trump launched his 2016 campaign, Democrats have argued that he is too weird in too many ways to be president.

They let their Hollywood wing paint him as Crazy Orange Man and the Washington wing stoke fear about threats to democracy and the smashing of political norms. 

These two wings merged Tuesday in the bizarre appearance of Robert De Niro.

Once a great actor, De Niro has become an unhinged Trump hater and his denunciation of the former president alternately as a “clown” and a “tyrant” amounted to little more than a pip squeaking. 

Except for one fact: De Niro didn’t show up on his own accord outside the Lower Manhattan courthouse where Trump is on trial. 

He was sent by Joe Biden’s campaign team as its representative.

The juvenile speech he read presumably was written by or approved by the White House. 

And they say Trump is weird? 

When a has-been actor is your top surrogate, somebody in the White House is panicking. 

Election ‘anxiety’ 

In fact, there is nothing normal about Joe Biden or his misbegotten presidency, despite what he and the media would have you believe.

Finally, the pressure of facts is demolishing the manufactured patina of character and competence. 

The De Niro performance came on the same day that Politico chronicled a “freakout” among party leaders who believe Biden is headed for defeat. 

“Anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives,” the outlet reports.

“And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects.” 

This is a sensible reaction, but what took them so long?

The Biden presidency has been a disaster for more than three years and the brains behind it are just now waking up? 

Chief among their ideas was to persecute — er, prosecute — Trump to keep him off the campaign trail and potentially put him in prison.

Superficially, it has succeeded as he’s stuck in a Manhattan courtroom most days and subject to a nonstop barrage of indictments and critical press coverage. 

The only hitch is that the legal jihad has backfired politically.

It’s made Trump more popular as the four criminal cases are so deeply flawed that it’s obvious they wouldn’t exist except for partisanship. 

That’s not just abnormal — it’s unprecedented in American history. 

Yet bad ideas are hard to kill and the artifice that Biden is normal and Trump is abnormal lives on.

The New York Times, a mouthpiece of Dem thinking, actually adopted that formula in a comparison of the candidates’ Memorial Day statements. 

Both talked about the cost of freedom, but Trump added a second statement full of vitriol aimed at the judges presiding over his cases. 

The Times called the second statement a “reminder of the stark differences” between the men and added: “Mr. Trump showed that he would not be held to the norms of behavior that guide the nation’s leaders on a somber national holiday.” 

Fair enough — if holiday statements are the only measure.

But here are a few things the Gray Lady leaves out of its calculations about “the norms of behavior.” 

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Biden White House is pressuring “European allies to back off plans to rebuke Iran for advances in its nuclear program.”

Some of those allies believe the administration doesn’t want to do anything to cause trouble with Iran before the US election. 

Is that a “norm” of behavior — to delay confronting Iran just to give a false impression of peace until the election?

That sounds more like election fraud than anything Trump has done. 

Condolences to Iran 

The same question applies to the United States expressing “its official condolences” to Iran after its president, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash.

There’s nothing normal about mourning a man known as the “Butcher of Tehran.” 

This is not the first time Biden has coddled Iran.

He refuses to hold the murderous mullahs accountable for the Hamas invasion of Israel, deciding to see no evil lest it destroy his preferred view of Iran as a stabilizing force. 

He also ignores Iran’s role in the daily rocket and missile attacks against Israel by Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

As with Hamas, both groups are financed and directed by Tehran. 

Similarly, his initial support of Israel declined when Muslim American voters in swing states said they would boycott his re-election campaign.

Almost immediately, Biden turned up the heat on Israel. 

Is it normal for a president to betray an ally during a war it didn’t start in a desperate bid to win the support of voters, many of whom are open antisemites? 

There’s a whole host of norms the president violates involving his son.

While Hunter Biden was being investigated by the Department of Justice, whose leaders report directly to the president, Biden had the habit of saying publicly, “My son did nothing wrong.” 

He also invited his son to White House functions where the attorney general was present.

It happened again over the Memorial Day weekend, despite White House aides grumbling about the “appearance.” 

Also over the weekend, The Post reported that Biden visited the home of Hallie Biden, the widow of his son Beau, and later Hunter’s lover.

She is scheduled to testify in Hunter’s illegal gun purchase trial, which begins next week, so there’s nothing even close to normal about the visit. 

If Trump did that, the Times would accuse him of witness tampering.

When Biden does it, crickets. 

The point is clear: Normal is whatever Biden does, and abnormal is whatever Trump does.

Everything else is detail.

Turning the page

Last August, I published a letter from reader Marvin Levine that read in part: “I believe Donald Trump is the biggest a–hole that walks the earth … I think his supporters have a screw loose” and “the sane people left in the country should do everything possible to keep him out of the White House.” 

Levine now writes again, starting with “Mea culpa” and adds: “While I am still not a big fan of Trump, the last year has been such a disaster that we will not survive another four years of Biden’s leadership. The border, the Trump persecutions, the economy and his deteriorating mental and physical state leave us no choice.”

Wrong, Harvard!

Harvard used to be a synonym for smart, but its pledge to stay silent on issues that don’t affect its core function is dopey. 

The problem isn’t that former president Claudine Gay spoke up about campus antisemitism.

It’s what she said that got her fired and threw Harvard into turmoil. 

By trying to hide behind “It depends on the context,” Gay greenlighted the harassment of Jewish students. 

Calling out the difference between right and wrong isn’t optional. It’s central to the mission of higher education. 

Harvard used to know that.