One Thing Biden and His Staff Refuse to Discuss: Trump’s Impeachment Trial

“We don’t get moving, they’re going to eat our lunch,” he said, before paying a visit to the National Institutes of Health, framing his day with his two most pressing concerns, the economy and the coronavirus.

And exhibiting a level of top-down message discipline that was rarely on display during the Trump presidency, Ms. Psaki has worked to reinforce the message that the president’s thoughts are not on the behavior of his predecessor and its consequences. “His view is that his role is — should be — currently focused on addressing the needs of the American people, putting people back to work, addressing the pandemic.”

Some Democrats in Congress, like Representative Kurt Schrader of Oregon, have taken a similar stance. Mr. Schrader said he feared breathing “life into the corpse of this president” and turning Mr. Trump into a “martyr” for his supporters by pursuing an impeachment trial against him and keeping him front and center in the news.

But the trial has instead provided Mr. Biden with some cover as he faced hurdles on some of his defining policy promises.

On Tuesday, as Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the lead impeachment manager, made an emotional appeal to senators, the White House backtracked on its stated goal of reopening “a majority of our schools” in the first 100 days of Mr. Biden’s presidency.

Mr. Trump’s trial dominated headlines instead of Ms. Psaki’s scaling back the president’s ambitions, saying the goal was for more than 50 percent of schools to have “some teaching” in person “at least one day a week” in the first 100 days.

In an email, Ms. Psaki disputed the fact that her comments signified a retraction of previous promises. “We gave our first definition of the specifics of a goal that had not yet been clearly defined for the public,” she said.

But Mr. DuHaime said an added value of Mr. Trump’s presence was that it “distracts attention from any controversial policy or personnel moves Biden is making during his first 100 days.”

To wit, the confirmation hearing for Neera Tanden, Mr. Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget and one of his more contentious appointments, drew little attention. And the questions Republican senators put to Ms. Tanden were more often about her own incendiary Twitter posts than about the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that Mr. Biden has proposed.

Some of Mr. Biden’s policies are generating some pushback from within his own party. Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, for instance, has urged Mr. Biden to reconsider his decision to rescind a presidential permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Former Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, said that the pipeline decision was one of several for which Mr. Biden might be facing more extensive criticism were it not for the impeachment trial.

“As long as we’re talking about Trump and impeachment, that means that we’re not talking about any small stumbles or missteps of the Biden administration,” Mr. Dent said.

Mr. Trump served as a powerful uniting force for Democrats throughout the 2020 campaign. His suspension from Twitter has prohibited him from sideline commentary criticizing and undermining the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s presidency. But it has also deprived Mr. Biden of that common enemy that has helped him unite the party.

With Mr. Trump uncharacteristically quiet, Democrats have over the past few weeks zeroed in on Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Republican from Georgia, as a substitute, highlighting her extreme views and her willingness to spread falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

The trial, for at least a week, brought the worst consequences of Mr. Trump’s language back into the public eye in a way, and served as a reminder of the change many Americans sought during the presidential election in November.

“Impeaching Trump was appropriate and necessary and so far none of the fears of it being an unhelpful distraction, or backfiring politically have materialized,” said Brian Fallon, a Democratic strategist. “It is reminding the public how much of a relief it is to have Trump gone and showing the extremeness of Republicans who are still standing with him.”

Peter Baker contributed reporting.