Major prisoner swap delivers a win for Democrats as Trump spirals

Even Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to criticize Biden on Thursday

Joe Biden speaks with family members of freed Russian prisoners in the White House state dinner room on August 1. (AFP via Getty Images)

They’re out, finally.

The release of a group of Americans and other westerners held in Russian detention provided a jolt of energy for an unsuspecting figure on Thursday: President Joe Biden, whose relevance as commander-in-chief has suddenly been sharply reinforced for a national news media with a short attention span. A total of 16 captives held by Russia were released, including former US Marine Paul Whelan, journalist Evan Gershkovich, and British-Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza.

It was a clear political victory for Biden at an unexpected time. He is still reeling from the political effects of withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race just weeks before his party’s national convention. Kamala Harris, his vice president, is now the presumptive nominee and has taken on a starring role in the campaign as well as back home in Washington.

And this victory couldn’t have come at a better time. Biden’s former opponent, Donald Trump, is in the middle of what appears to be a downward spiral as pressure mounts on his campaign over past statements about women made by JD Vance, his running mate. His campaign has also largely been unable to blunt the stunning momentum Harris has seen out of the gate, though it fired back on Thursday with its own impressive monthly fundraising total for July: $327 million.

With his new opponent quickly eating away at his polling lead and pulling in nearly two-thirds of that total in just her first week in the race, Trump appeared for a disastrous interview on Wednesday at a conference held by the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). The result: a news cycle focused around him questioning the race of America’s first Black vice president, as other negative headlines pile up.

On Capitol Hill, Trump’s loyalist firing line has fallen silent. Once in unison attacking the president over his age and mental faculties, the GOP conferences in the House and Senate have been left, like the Trump campaign, divided and scattered in their response to Kamala Harris’s asendancy. Now, they’re back on uncomfortable ground as they are forced to respond to the former president’s racist line of attack against the vice president.

The Republicans who spoke to The Independent on Thursday found themselves unwilling to directly attack Joe Biden over the news of the prisoner swap, as Trump had done on Truth Social. Even some of Trump’s closest allies couldn’t bring themselves to take away the moment from the Democratic president, and instead offered lukewarm questions about what the Russians got in return. That question appears to at least so far include one convicted hitman held in Germany, as well as a few other Russian agents held in western countries including the US.

Tommy Tuberville, a Republican freshman senator from Alabama, came the closest: “What did we get?” he asked, before it was pointed out that two Americans were released as part of the deal.

“I’m glad that they’re both out,” he said, “but what’d we have to give up?”

John Thune, who may be the next Senate GOP leader after Mitch McConnell steps down later this year, echoed Tuberville. Calling the return of two Americans “great” news, he added that “everybody's asking the question about what was the price that we paid to the Russians”.

But the clearest sign of the Republican Party holding fire: Ted Cruz, the conservative gadfly from Texas, didn’t even go that far.

“I'm very glad that Evan [Gershkovich]’s back but I want to examine the details and just assess it on the merits. I haven't seen the full details of what occurred,” Cruz told The Independent.

The stage is set for Kamala Harris’s “honeymoon” phase to continue. Pundits, meanwhile, are increasingly coming around to the idea that the race’s trajectory could be too much for Trump to survive — especially given that Harris is set for her own four-day coronation in front of thousands of Democrats later this month.