Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Trump's a convicted felon and Biden isn't shy about saying so

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo:

Biden Takes Aim At Felon Trump And Out-of-Control Supreme Court

The NYT write-up of the new Biden ad takes on the kind of weird distancing that political reporting sometimes offers up as objectivity.

The headline — “Biden Campaign Ad Paints Trump as a Felon” — suggests maybe it’s an open question whether Trump is a felon. Sure, the Biden campaign is painting him that way, but who is to say, really?

The story’s lede continues with that weird posture:

President Biden’s campaign on Monday began its most aggressive effort to brand former President Donald J. Trump a felon, with the introduction of a new television advertisement that focuses on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s criminal conviction.

It mentions the criminal conviction explicitly, but what is up with the ascribing the branding of Trump as a felon to the Biden campaign? Why does that have to be hedged as a Biden campaign effort rather than an established fact?

The headline was subsequently amended to read “Biden Campaign Ad Calls Attention to Trump’s Felon Status,” a more accurate description.