Earlier this year, after Trump was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over bogus charges, Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire argued that Democrats want Trump to be the Republican nominee because he’d be the easiest to beat.
“That’s obviously the play here. There is no other conceivable reason to arrest and perp walk him on a bull***t misdemeanor charge,” Walsh claimed. “I might be overestimating the tactical intelligence of the idiot power-hungry hacks behind this. But if there is any political strategy then that has to be it.”
I was never a big fan of this theory, but one thing is for sure: few things have buoyed Trump’s poll numbers more than the obvious partisan prosecution that he has been targeted with. Be it the raid on his Mar-a-Lago home, the Bragg indictment, or the federal indictment by the Biden administration, the prosecution only adds to the perception that Trump is being targeted by a corrupt justice system.
On Tuesday, Trump announced that he is expected to be indicted again by the same partisan prosecutor in the classified documents case, this time over January 6 charges. If he’s right, and there’s little reason to believe he’s not, this will once again boost his standing in the Republican Party, further insulating his substantial lead in the polls while sending the message to the voters that the Biden administration is abusing its power to protect Biden’s presidency.
The Manhattan case was an obvious abuse of the legal system, as Bragg elevated a minor misdemeanor charge to a felony and stacked multiple charges over the same crime. The classified documents case wasn’t much better, and the contrast between Trump’s indictment and Biden facing no consequences for mishandling documents made the situation even more disturbing. The new January 6 case can’t be any stronger, as claims against Trump regarding January 6 haven’t already been alleged countless times and debunked.
Related: Democrats Whisper That Joe Biden Will Be Replaced in 2024
So after the Democrats cheer and gloat and think they’ve gotten the best of Trump, what happens next? This won’t stop his candidacy and will likely only help him win the nomination, as Republican voters see these prosecutions for exactly what they are. Are Democrats really banking on the idea that Trump is the easiest candidate to beat?
Maybe, but they really shouldn’t. And perhaps they need to adjust their strategy. Remember Miles Taylor, the former DHS official who wrote the anonymous letter to the New York Times and a book blasting Trump? He’s warning the anti-Trumpers that, despite everything they’ve tried, Trump can very much win in 2024.
“There’s been a number of polls that show the ex-president beating Joe Biden by several points. It would be hubris to say, ‘Oh, no, we would beat him again a second time,’” Taylor says in an interview with The Guardian. “Actually, I don’t think that. If the election was held today, I think Donald Trump would defeat Joe Biden, and that really concerns me.”
In fact, Taylor is so convinced that Trump can win that he thinks it will take something extreme to defeat him. “The single best jump to beat Trump is a unity coalition that Biden would undertake to form. He talked a lot about bringing Republicans into his administration in the first term. Not a whole lot came in. He needs to bring someone to the top of the ticket to show he would govern for the first time in American history as a unity president with a unity administration,” Taylor explains. “That’s maybe his only shot to decisively beat Donald Trump.”
That’s obviously not going to happen. Biden never even tried to follow through on his promise to be a unity president or to work with Republicans. And he certainly won’t replace Kamala Harris with Liz Cheney. So as far as Taylor is concerned, Trump will inevitably return to the White House.
And Democrats may be helping him with all of these bogus prosecutions.
It’s hard not to appreciate the irony.
