Why Biden is going about his normal routine as Trump is indicted again

At the very moment a federal indictment was unsealed detailing former President Donald Trump's alleged crimes related to his handling of top-secret defense documents, his successor was attempting to promote his legislative agenda, surrounded by beige machines and black hoses.

"We're in an incredible competition worldwide, economically, politically, militarily," President Joe Biden declared at a community college in North Carolina.

If Biden was at all concerned his message was being obscured by the history-making second indictment of his predecessor, he didn't let on.

For Biden, the business-as-normal approach to decidedly abnormal circumstances amounts to a defining feature of a presidency primarily meant to convey stability after a tumultuous four years of Trump.

Aides know Biden's dutiful, there-and-back stops at community colleges, union halls and construction sites aren't likely to generate the same level of headlines as those about Trump's legal peril.

Yet perhaps more than the accomplishments themselves, Biden is hoping to project an air of competence and authority as a contrast to the chaos that has accompanied Trump for years. The boring-by-comparison tactic, in his advisers' view, will come to benefit him in the end.

The last time former Trump was indicted, Biden left the White House the next day intent on going about his schedule without wading into the matter.