Almost a month has passed since Trump received his 4th indictment, and about two weeks have passed since the first GOP primary debate. How have Trump’s indictments affected the GOP primaries?
What was Trump indicted for?
In recent news, former president Donald Trump was indicted by the Atlanta Grand Jury for the 4th time due to his attempt to overturn the Georgia election in 2020. In a phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump asked him to “find votes” to win him the state, and proceeded to send a letter in September 2021 requesting for the decertification of Georgia’s vote. Charges to defraud the U.S and obstruct official proceedings were placed on Trump. Prior to this indictment, he had previously been faced with 34 felony counts regarding a hush money case, 40 felony counts regarding the classified documents case, and 4 charges in the January 6th case.
Can Trump still run for president?
Recently, democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia stated a legal argument using the 14th amendment, which bans those “engaged in insurrection” from holding any “civil, military, or elected office,” could possibly be used to remove Trump from the ballot. However, this requires two-thirds approval from both the House and Senate. As discussed in class, a downside to the supermajority vote is that passing is difficult and unlikely, meaning Trump is here to stay for the 2024 election.
How are indictments affecting Trump?
In an ideal scenario, Trump’s popularity would be hurt by the controversy and criminal charges he faces, since voters would be appalled at the possibility of a criminal occupying the highest office of government. However, following each indictment, Trump’s popularity is rising, which is shown in media coverage and campaign profits. According to the New York Times, Fox News airs over 3,000 fifteen-second segments about Donald Trump per week following each indictment case. Prior to Trump’s first indictment, it took his campaign 88 days to raise $12M, but after the Manhattan case, it took 7 days to raise an additional $13M. On social media, Trump portrays himself and his supporters as political victims by stating: “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.” Currently, he leads the primaries with 62%, and continues on an upward trend.
How have indictments affected his competitors?
Prior to the first indictment, the GOP primaries featured a close race between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, who held 43% and 37% respectively on January 1st. Upon entering the race, DeSantis was expected to be Trump’s main competitor, but since then, Trump has stolen the spotlight from DeSantis’ “war on wokeness” and feuds with Disney, and leads DeSantis by 46% this week. While DeSantis needs to differentiate and establish himself amongst the GOP, criticizing Trump can also alienate him from potential supporters. In a recent interview with NBC, DeSantis confirmed Trump lost the election, but believes it was poorly run due to mail-in ballots and blames Fauci’s lockdown policies. However, he also hinted he would likely pardon Trump if elected president. His indecisive approach towards Trump has proved to be unsuccessful leading to this point. What stance do other candidates take on former president Trump?
In the first GOP debate, candidates were asked whether they would continue to support Trump if he were convicted in Georgia. Chris Christie did not raise his hand, instead, he labeled Trump’s conduct as “below the office of president,” and defended this statement the following day in an interview with MSNBC. This statement was met with boos, and following the debate, Christie hovers around 2-3% in the polls. Additionally, Mike Pence, who emphasized Trump should never hold office again, has fallen to 4% recently, after previously holding 10% at the start of the year.
On the contrary, GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has established himself as the third place runner and closed the gap within 5% between himself and DeSantis. In the GOP debate, Ramaswamy praised Trump as the greatest president of the 21st century, and when faced with a pledge to support the convicted former president, he was first to raise his hand. Being an adamant supporter of Trump has seemingly helped Ramaswamy gain popularity amongst the party.
In conclusion, the MAGA support base is growing amongst the Republican Party, despite exhibiting violence and possibly attempted insurrection on our capitol. Social media in recent years has changed the ability to control political factions, and Madison’s concerns expressed in Federalist 10 remain relevant today.
-Chris
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/07/politics/trump-indictments-criminal-cases/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/us/politics/trump-indictment-effect.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/politics/trump-fourth-indictment-2024-election/index.html
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/national/
7 comments:
It is honestly insane that Trump continues to hold such a cult following among modern conservatives. As you mentioned Trump's own former vice-president, Mike Pence, has disavowed his actions. It makes you wonder: What could Trump possibly do that would finally shock supporters away from him? His former comment that he could shoot someone and his supporters would still support him is completely plausible by this point. This seems like an exclusively Republican problem too. Biden, though generally well-recieved by the Democratic party, is still very very often criticized (for policy decisions, age, etc.). Republicans on the other hand, generally tolerate no ill-will towards Trump, always focusing on how the rest of the world is trying to silence him. This is a generalization of course, because there seem to be many sensible Republicans out there (like those that support Chris Christie and Mike Pence). That said they are in the extreme minority.
Tangent: From what little I had seen of Vivek Ramaswamy, he seemed reasonable. That said, I wasn't aware he was a VERY passionate Trump supporter. Is he just trying to attract the support of the Trump base? Does he genuinely believe Trump is a victim? Either way, he seems to be pretty spineless in that regard.
It's scary that rather than moving away from Trump, much of the Republican party is supporting him even more. From a political standpoint it makes sense that Republican politicians would seek to side with him given how loyal his supporters are, but it's also disturbing that they're willing to turn a blind eye to an attempt to change the election results.
This makes me question whether the indictments are helping to stop Trump from winning the 2024 election. It seems that the indictments are helping him gather support by allowing him and his supporters to play the role of the suppressed or political victim. Considering how unlikely a conviction that would prevent him from running would be, allowing him to fade into the background until the elections are over might be more effective at reducing his support.
It seems extremely interesting to me that the indictments against Trump are actually increasing support for him rather than condemning him as they seem to be intended. Even more frighteningly, other GOP candidates who condemn Trump are suffering in the polls for it. I don't know how to respond to another comment, but I agree with the point that Alexandra Ding made which is that the more tactical solution for Democrats to ensure that Trump remains outside of a position of power is to let him fade from the limelight instead of essentially making a martyr of him through the indictments. Especially because the votes that turn from other GOP candidates who don't support end up going straight to Trump as they are asked to voice their opinions.
I think something worth pointing out is that according to CNN, around 70% of republican or republican leaning individuals believe Biden's election win was illegitimate. Although the sample size isn't as big as it could be, it still shows that a lot of people believe that Trump was 'robbed'. Therefore it's not surprising that he has managed to spin the narrative around to portray himself and the republican party as political victims as far as the whole Georgia thing goes.
Playing the victim card also isn't a new thing for trump. His claims of "fake news" and his claim that the mara-largo search was "a shocking abuse of power" are both examples of this. Both of those narratives helped him gain popularity although they really shouldn't have since he kind of just spat out assertions without evidence.I find it strange how effective his 'victim campaigns' have been and continue to be considering he is a white male who was born rich and is far from a victim by just about any metric, but then again, what do I know.
I definitely agree with previous commenters that the fact that the indictments are actually increasing Trump's popularity is pretty disturbing. I think it could have to do with an "us against them" mindset, where his supporters feel as if they are uniting against a common enemy behind him in order to prevent "others" from taking away their way of life. For example, Trump himself has been using these cases as almost positives, and even recently said to the audience at a political rally that "I'm being indicted for you." His own campaign has even released merchandise/shirts with his mug shot on them.
Furthermore, building on Alex's point, considering how much overlap there is between Trump's trial dates and the primaries (with his 2020 election case starting the day before "Super Tuesday"), it's a bit scary how this might affect his popularity. However, I also don't think its possible/a good option to let him fade into the background if that involves dropping the indictment cases, because he does need to be held responsible for his actions.
It is quite disturbing seeing how cultlike his supporters are becoming, although considering how so many of them tend to be involved in conspiracy theories like QAnon, perhaps this isn't too surprising. On the party side of things, I have a feeling that we might be seeing a party split in the Republicans somewhere in the near future, between the more pro-Trump elements and the moderates in the GOP. Like others in the comments are pointing out, Trump appears to be pretty willing to use this as fuel for his campaign, and I fear that these indictments will only end up emboldening him. The fact that so many appear to be fine with his attempts at rigging a federal election really tells us a lot about how much these "patriots" really care about democracy. The one thing I know for certain is that next year's election is going to be very, very messy, possibly even more so than the 2020 elections.
It's very interesting to see how motivated Trump's supporters are by the idea of this so-called "witch hunt." Perhaps there is some revolutionary mentality there, maybe people believe they're fighting for liberty and freedom as Americans did in 1776, but it's a rather deluded conception consider the damage they are causing to American democracy. If you watch any interviews with pro-Trump voters, there is a common thread of them actually being motivated to vote for him not in spite of his indictments, but because of it. It's honestly quite disturbing. There is a culture of people thinking that the most criticized people are "just telling the truth" and are being oppressed for it. I feel like there has been a general loss of the idea that there are concrete reasons for why he is being criticized. The country's polarization issue seems to exacerbate the problem as a whole, as it isn't who is right versus who is wrong anymore, it's who is a democrat and who is a republican, and whichever side you personally fall on defines your beliefs.
The first Republican debate reflects this idea, especially considering how when asked if they would support Trump as the GOP nominee, almost every single candidate at the Republican debate raised their hands, one after another, few willing to stand alone against Trump. The cult-culture surrounding Trump has perpetuated a sort of fear-mongering effect among politicians, where barely any (save for Chris Christie) are willing to actually go against the hive-mind and aggravate the MAGA horde.
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