GOP rivals see Trump impeachment as a big deal (for them)
Former President Donald J. Trump faces 37 federal charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life, but it’s the rest of the Republican field that is in the most immediate political trouble.
Advisers working for Trump’s opponents face what some consider an irritating task: trying to convince Republican primary voters, accustomed to Trump’s years of controversy and deeply suspicious of the administration, to face criminal charges for the holding secret documents is an offence. a bad thing.
In earlier eras, the indictment of a presidential candidate would have been at the very least a political gift to the other candidates, if not an event that marked the end of the indicted rival’s run. Competitors would have been thrilled at the prospect of the frontrunner spending months in court as damaging new details steadily trickled out. And they could still be Mr. Trump’s downfall: If he isn’t convicted before November 2024, his latest arrest will likely win him no converts in the general election.
But Mr. Trump’s competitors are — counterintuitively, according to the old conventional political wisdom — actually afraid of what threatens to become an endless cycle of impeachment news that could swallow up the summer. His rivals are desperate for media coverage of their campaigns, but since the indictment went public last Thursday, as several advisers grumbled, the only way they can get their candidates on television is by answering questions about Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump makes full use of the trappings of his former office: the big, black SUVs; the Secret Service agents in dark glasses; the stops at grocery stores and restaurants with entourages, bodyguards and reporters in tow, said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman who works on Nikki Haley’s campaign.
“That’s powerful stuff if you’re campaigning against it,” said Mr. Dawson.
And the end of the indictment season is not yet in sight. This was Trump’s second indictment in two months, and he may be charged again this summer, in Georgia, for trying to overturn the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor who led that investigation gave the timing when she announced last month that most of her associates would work remotely for the first three weeks of August — right when Republican presidential candidates prepare for the first debate of the primary season. on August 2. 23 in Milwaukee.
In Mr. Trump’s federal case, in South Florida, the former president may face trial in the middle of the primary campaign season.
A Republican candidate who got some airtime, Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy entrepreneur and author, did so by flying to Miami from Ohio and addressing assembled journalists outside the courthouse to record Mr Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday. He promised to pardon Mr. Trump if he is elected president. Ranting against a “donor class” that he says urged him to reject Mr. Trump, he knocked on the news media demanding that every other GOP candidate sign a pledge to pardon Mr. Trump if elected.
“Half the battle shows up,” said Mr. Ramaswamy in an interview on his way to Iowa Tuesday night. “I’m getting my message out, at least the part of it that pertains to the events of the day.”
Most of Mr. Trump’s other rivals have tied the knot to form responses to the charges that would capture media attention without alienating Republican voters who continue to support Mr. Trump.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sided with Mr. Trump, but with little enthusiasm. He subtly rebuked Mr Trump’s behavior, touting Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents as a substitute for Mr Trump when he said he “would have been court-martialed in New York in a minute” if he had taken classified documents with him during his service in New York. the Navy.
But Mr. DeSantis has also taken the opportunity to give Republican voters what they most want: He has defended Mr. Trump and attacked President Biden and his Justice Department by saying they are unfairly targeting Republicans. On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis started roll out his plan to review the “armed” FBI and Justice Department. And the main pro-DeSantis super PAC issued a video attacking the “Biden DOJ” for “indicting the former president.”
Before the indictment was released, former Vice President Mike Pence said on CNN that he hoped Mr. Trump would not be charged because it would be “terribly divisive in the country”.
Then Mr. Pence read out the indictment. He said that on Tuesday The editors of The Wall Street Journal“These are very serious allegations. And I cannot defend what is being claimed. But the president has a right to his day in court, he has a right to defend himself, and I want to defer judgment until he has had an opportunity to respond.”
Mr Pence then denounced the Biden administration’s Justice Department as politicized – largely because of its treatment of Mr Trump – and promised that as president he would clean it up.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, both initially greeted the indictment with condemnation of what they called unequal justice — harsh on Republicans, lenient on Democrats — before moving on to estimate that the allegations against mr. Trump was serious and should be taken seriously.
Then, on Tuesday, Ms. Haley volunteered that if elected, she would also consider pardoning Mr. Trump.
All of those distortions open up candidates with simpler messages, for or against the prosecution of Mr. Trump.
“I think they don’t know what they’re thinking yet,” said Mr. Ramaswamy on the candidates he called the “finger-in-the-wind class”. Some candidates “tend to serve as mouthpieces for the donors funding them and the consultants advising them, and the donors and consultants haven’t figured out their advice yet.”
All this probably sounds like music to Mr. Trump’s ears: As long as the news media and his rivals fight each other and obsess over him, he must be winning.
The only Republican presidential candidate so far to speak out clearly and forcefully against Mr. Trump over the actions detailed in the indictment was former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. He condemned Mr. Trump and showed contempt for Republicans who placed the blame elsewhere.
“We are in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming DOJ,” Mr. Christie said Monday night at a CNN meeting at City Hall. “How about blaming him? He did it.”
He also begged his fellow competitors to focus on the front runner, not each other, saying that 2024 is playing out like a repeat of 2016, when a large field, including Mr. Christie, snapped at each other and galloped Mr. Trump away. with the nomination.
Tucker Carlson, who was taken off the air by Fox News but remains influential on the Republican grassroots, posted a video to Twitter on Tuesday night capturing what Trump’s rivals are up against. Mr. Carlson tried to portray the federal indictment as evidence that Mr. Trump was “the only man with a real shot at becoming president” who was feared by the Washington establishment. The clip is an implied rebuke of Mr. DeSantis and comes close to an endorsement of Mr. Trump.
It’s too soon after the indictment to draw firm conclusions about how Republican voters process the news. But the early data bodes well for Mr. Trump and ominous for his opponents. In a CBS News poll Released Sunday, only 7 percent of likely Republican primary voters said the indictment would lower their opinion of Trump. Twice as many said the charges would change their view of him “for the better”.
An adviser to one of Trump’s rivals, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid, admitted he was depressed about how Republican voters received news of what he considered devastating facts unearthed by the special counsel, Jack Smith.
“I think the reality is that there is such a huge distrust of the Justice Department and the FBI after the Hillary years and the Russiagate investigation that it seems that no other facts are telling Republican voters any different at this point. persuasive,” he said.
Mr Dawson, who supports Ms Haley, said Mr Trump’s polls are likely to rise in the coming weeks, along with a sense that the government cannot be trusted.
The other candidates bet they have the luxury of time.
Mr. Christie has stepped up to bloody the former president with his attacks, which probably won’t help Mr. Drafting Christie, as one consultant put it, perhaps with the desire to use a term for horse racing.
As more information emerges ahead of the former president’s trial, especially the details of what was in the secret documents Mr Trump kept — details of battle plans and nuclear programs — the seriousness of the crimes the former president is accused of can seep in slowly.
At least that’s the hope for Mr. Trump’s rivals who are languishing far behind him in polls.
“Blast that little puppet, then go away, let the voters read the term paper and let it sink in,” Mr. Dawson said. He added, of Mr. Trump, “People are going to question his sanity.”