Donald Trump is going to be indicted. (Pause for effect.) This is not earth-shattering news for most of us, but the mainstream media is going to portray it as a shocking development. It’s history, don’t you know? But no matter how Trump’s legal troubles are characterized in the hysterically rabid anti-Trump press, the country will divide, as usual, between those who hate Trump and those who love him. That won’t change.
And since almost everyone has already made up their mind about Donald Trump, it’s not likely that large numbers of voters will be swayed one way or another after this first indictment is announced.
Yes — the first. There are four criminal inquiries into Trump’s businesses, his personal life, and the 2020 campaign. And each and every investigation will almost certainly charge Trump with something. After all, if a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, charging Trump shouldn’t be a problem.
Related: Yes, They’re Going to Arrest Donald Trump. Deal With It.
Trump’s current legal problem resides in the Manhattan district court where a grand jury is getting ready to charge him with crimes related to the $160,000 in hush money he allegedly had paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 to cover up his affair. An eight-year-old case that everyone knows about may not exactly be a ham sandwich, more like a can of sardines.
Can Donald Trump continue his campaign while under the cloud of criminal charges? The radical left is dying to see Trump do a perp walk into a Manhattan police station. That won’t happen so, yes, Trump will continue his presidential campaign. And he will use the indictment as a political prop to show how persecuted he is.
“Given all the unknowns right now, it’s far too early to know the political impact,” said Alex Conant, who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) 2016 campaign.
“That said, it’s hard to see how this is a positive for Trump,” added Conant, who now works with Firehouse Strategies. “At a minimum, it’s a distraction from the relatively well-disciplined campaign he’s run in recent weeks. It will remind a lot of voters about the chaos that they really disliked during his administration.”
Mr. Conant may be right. But the “distraction” itself will be a plus. Trump is an expert at creating an “us vs. them” dynamic, and this appeals to many in his base who feel they’re being boned by the government, their boss, or large corporations. The appeal to his audience’s sense of victimhood by sharing his own feelings about being a victim could be a boon in some ways.
Trump’s statement about the potential prosecution hinted at the political motivation for the indictment.
“This is a political Witch-Hunt, trying to take down the leading candidate, by far, in the Republican Party while at the same time also leading all Democrats in the polls, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote.
“It is appalling that the Democrats would play this card and only means that they are certain that they cannot win at the voter booth, so they have to go to a tool that has never been used in such a way in our country, weaponized law enforcement,” Trump added.
Many Republicans will see the actions by Soros-backed prosecutor Bragg in just that light.
If other Republican candidates are smart, they’ll ignore any indictment and refer all questions from hysterical reporters wanting to start a GOP war to Trump and his campaign.
But that won’t stop the media from creating a full-on, blood-in-the-water, feeding frenzy surrounding Trump. It will suck a lot of the air out of the Republican campaign — for how long is hard to say.
If you’re wondering if this will cause defections from the Trump camp, it probably will. But this is going to be a long campaign with as many as seven or eight candidates. And this would be exactly the same scenario that Trump used to his advantage in 2016 — multiple candidates dividing the anti-Trump vote until the end, when Trump was the last man standing.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member