Right now, Donald Trump is his own running mate. Meaning that he is not going to share the national spotlight with anyone if he can dominate it on his own.

And that is what he is doing as he stands trial in Manhattan on dubious and politicized so-called hush money payment charges that never should have never been brought and were squashed years ago.

It is an ego thing for Trump, and more. It is a desperation thing for Joe Biden.

The Democrats have to knock Trump out of the race, one way or another.

Trump needs no vice-presidential candidate to speak for him. He speaks for himself, despite proposals that he be gagged and fined or jailed during his Democrat-sponsored show trial which is aimed at sabotaging his
campaign for president.

All things being equal, a fading President Joe Biden, 81, cannot stand up on a debate stage—or anywhere else—with an energized 77-year-old Donald Trump.

One only has to compare and match their almost simultaneous campaign appearances last week.

In one, Biden, escorted by Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, as though he were out for a walk from the nursing home, showed up at a Wawa to get ice cream. There were no people around the pair, no one rushing to shake hands. Biden had a lost look on his face as he was led to the ice cream counter by Parker. He did not talk to anybody or issue any remarks.

In the other, Trump, in a break for the Manhattan court, made a surprise appearance at the Harlem bodega where Jose Alba, the clerk, acting in self-defense, killed a violent ex-convict who was attempting to rob him.

Soft on crime Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg quickly came to the aid of the robber and not the victim. Bragg, like he is doing to Trump, put Alba through hell. He charged Alba with murder and sent him to Riker’s Island before was forced to drop all charges against him.

Unlike a wobbly Biden in Philadelphia, Trump needed no one to take him by the hand to show him around the bodega. He was warmly greeted by black and Hispanic residents who crowded around him as he spoke about his love of New York and how he was going to fight crime.

He sounded like he was running for district attorney against Bragg who, in a way, he is.

“We’re going to straighten New York out,” he told the crowd, which responded by chanting, “Four more years, four more years.”

It was no contest. Trump handily won the day, just as he did Thursday meeting with construction workers before heading to court, and it was all free television campaign coverage.

The same was true of the pairs’ earlier response to the college anti-Israel, antisemitic demonstrations. Biden mumbled some sort of equivocation, while Trump said they were “a disgrace.”

Trump would also handily win the election too if Joe Biden and the Democrats did not twist the country’s justice system into something Vladimir Putin would be proud of.

So, it is understandable why Bragg, the court and the Democrats would like nothing better than to gag Trump throughout the length of the trial.

It would be a mistake for Trump to name a running mate to campaign for him while he is tied up for weeks in Bragg’s bagged courthouse trial. Were he to do so, much of the media attention, which Trump thrives on, would be diverted from him to the running mate, whoever he or she was.

Besides, all the hopeful running mates are already out there on television defending Trump and attacking the Democrat produced and directed show trial.

The Democrats are playing with fire as they seek to destroy Trump. What goes around tends to come around.

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It is not too far-fetched to think that if Trump becomes president, it will be Joe Biden on trial, not Donald Trump. That is what we have come to.

In their hounding of Trump, they are turning one of the most aggressive and, at times, obnoxious man on the planet into a sympathetic martyr.

Meanwhile, it is all out war between the Wawas and the Bodegas.

Take your pick.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at peter.lucas@bostonherald.com.