Analysis
After indictment, Trump will play the victim –
and the tactic will work for many Republicans
David Smith
in
Washington
Trump has followed a pattern since 2016 – the bigger
the alleged crime, the louder he airs grievances and claims he’s being
persecuted
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Fri 31 Mar
2023 06.00 BST
Comedian
Chris Rock gazed out at the audience at an awards ceremony in Washington
earlier this month. “Are you guys really going to arrest Trump?” he asked
bluntly. “This is only going to make him more popular!”
Donald
Trump has not yet been arrested but is now the first person to occupy the Oval
Office to then be charged with a crime. It also raises the prospect of the
Republican favorite for the 2024 presidential race to be running for the White
House while also being criminally prosecuted – something likely to bring even
more chaos to America’s already deeply fractured political landscape.
It emerged
on Thursday that a Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Trump over a hush
money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016
presidential election campaign.
Florida-based
Trump is now expected to surrender himself on Tuesday to the Manhattan district
attorney (DA) to be fingerprinted and photographed for a mugshot – something
guaranteed to delight his many opponents, appall his fans and divide the United
States even more.
30 March
2023 is therefore a day for the history books. It offered an affirmation of the
Magna Carta principle that no one, not even the onetime commander in chief, is
above the law. The 45th president of the United States is set to stand trial
and, if convicted, could find himself behind bars instead of running for
re-election.
Presidential
historian Michael Beschloss said on the MSNBC network: “Tomorrow, in terms of
American history, we will be waking up in a different country. Before tonight,
presidents in this country were kings.”
But while
the law is clear, the politics are murky. A criminal charge or even conviction
does not prevent someone running for the White House, and Trump is currently
leading in opinion polls for the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
In the
pre-Trump universe, an indictment over a hush money payment to an adult film
star would have been career-ending. Candidates have withdrawn from election
races for much less.
But since
2016, Trump has been a political judo master, turning the weight of opponents
and allegations against them to his own advantage. The bigger the alleged
crime, the louder he airs grievances and the more he plays the victim – and so
far the Republican party has been mostly willing to indulge him.
That is the
role he will play with an indictment hanging over him. At a campaign rally in
Waco, Texas, last weekend, he claimed: “The Biden regime’s weaponization of law
enforcement against their political opponents is something straight out of the
Stalinist Russia horror show.” He suggested that it is the most serious problem
facing America today.
In a
statement on Thursday following his indictment, Trump said: “This is Political
Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history… The Democrats
have lied, cheated and stolen in their obsession with trying to ‘Get Trump,’
but now they’ve done the unthinkable - indicting a completely innocent person
in an act of blatant Election Interference.”
Trump will
now doubtless set about putting the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg,
on trial in the court of public opinion. He has already used dehumanising and
racist language. A social media post, later removed, showed a photo of Trump
holding a baseball bat and apparently looming over Bragg, raising fears of
violence against him.
America’s
tragedy is that the tactic will work with many Republicans. That Bragg is a
Democrat from New York will trigger a Pavlovian response in Trump’s favor. That
the case is seven years old, based on an untested legal theory and has Michael
Cohen, a convicted criminal, as a key witness will provide further ammunition.
This
pattern came into a focus earlier this month when Trump falsely predicted his
own arrest. Republicans leaped to his defence and he reportedly raised $1.5m in
three days; on Thursday night he quickly sent out another fundraising email.
The drama
put Trump back where he wants to be: at the centre of the news cycle. Not
coincidentally, it also gave him a boost in the Republican primary polls, extending
a lead over Ron DeSantis, even as the Florida governor was on a book tour
trying to promote his own brand. Everyone was talking about Trump.
So it was
that, after news of the indictment emerged on Thursday, Republicans again came
to his aid. Trump ally Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of
Representatives, accused Bragg of “irreparably” damaging the country “in an
attempt to interfere” in the election.
JD Vance, a
Republican senator for Ohio, described the indictment as “political persecution
masquerading as law”, “blatant election interference” and “a direct assault on
the tens of millions of Americans who support him”.
But the
most telling reaction came from DeSantis himself. This could have been the
moment for him to break from Trump and prove statesmanlike, calling for dignity
and unity in a solemn moment for the nation. Instead he went full Maga.
DeSantis
said: “The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda
turns the rule of law on its head. It is un-American.” Blowing an antisemitic
dog whistle, DeSantis twice linked Bragg to philanthropist George Soros, adding
that Florida would not assist in “an extradition request” to send Trump to New
York.
The
spineless responses suggested that, in the short term at least, the indictment
will provide a rallying cry for Trump and help rather than hurt him in the 2024
Republican primary. In the for-us-or-against-us binary of American politics,
the party base will be for him and against the perceived Democratic elites and
the deep state.
Yet again,
he has thrust America into the political unknown, a twilight zone where
precedents do not apply and everyone has to respond on the fly. Can the
Manhattan court assemble an impartial jury, and will the timing of the trial
collide with the Republican primary?
Then, what
about the other major legal perils threatening Trump: over the January 6 insurrection,
over election interference in Georgia and over the mishandling of classified
documents? These cases are arguably more clear-cut and consequential – but not
necessarily in the eyes of Republicans. Will he recklessly incite unrest among
his supporters?
The lesson
of the Trump era is that most predictions are wrong. The only certainty is that
Thursday will go down as the day when Trump’s age of impunity, in which he was
never legally held to account, is over. The man who rose to power leading
chants of “Lock her up!” is about to get a taste of his own medicine.
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