Former President Trump appeared somber and calm in a Miami courtroom, hands clasped and leaning back in his chair, at times speaking loudly only to utter the words “not guilty” to 37 federal charges stemming from his handling of classified documents.
Shockingly, it was the second time in three months that Trump had been impeached. And that’s not counting the $5 million civil judgment against him for sexual abuse in late April.
Two more criminal investigations are still pending, trials are looming, and Trump remains the favorite for the Republican nomination.
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AP
Former President Donald Trump, center, flanked by his defense attorneys, signs his bond in federal court Tuesday in Miami.
We have some questions. Here are four about the following and the politics of Trump’s legal troubles:
1. What will we see from Trump and his team in the future?
Trump and his team seem to find some comfort in the chaos. They’ve been here before: uncaught heroes, the Access Hollywood tape, allegations galore, the firing of an FBI director, the Mueller investigation, two impeachments, top lieutenants who turned on him or they went to jail, electoral conspiracies and now two. indictments and two more criminal investigations remain.
Most would burn out by continuing in the background, but not Trump.
Instead, he’s trying to turn this into an opportunity. He has become so isolated with such a large part of the Republican base, that he is betting to increase his support in the Republican primaries.
Immediately after court, for example, Trump took his motorcade to Versailles, a famous Cuban-American cafe in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. It was joyful. He prayed with those in attendance that communism would not come to US shores, and they sang him happy birthday. (Today is his 77th birthday.)
Former President Donald Trump greets supporters as he visits the Versailles restaurant on Tuesday in Miami.
It was a hint of the political power Trump retains in some conservative Latino communities, particularly in Florida, a state that has drifted more Republican during the Trump years.
He has been raising money from it, using an image of himself in a fake photograph that has been posted on his social media site and emailed to followers. (For the record: no mug shots were taken; he was not handcuffed; and only fingerprints were taken).
Hours after his court appearance, he met with donors, attending a fundraiser in New Jersey. And after months of bashing his main GOP rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his team released an ad this week featuring Trump against Biden.
The idea is to present Trump as the presumptive Republican nominee, hoping to bury any notion that primary voters would choose someone else.
2. Will the other Republicans vying for the nomination continue to let him slide?
But there are still six or seven months to go before the first candidate states have their say. And plenty of time for rivals to take advantage of Trump’s legal woes.
If only they were.
Most Republicans facing him have instead tried to walk a fine line: criticizing the Justice Department, all the while hoping that the weight of the myriad charges against Trump will prove too much.
It’s a risky strategy. Only a few candidates have been direct in their criticism. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have been harsh critics from the start. Hutchinson said Trump should drop out. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, called the charges against him “devastating.”
But they are largely a minority in their party and have limited support.
Instead, DeSantis has claimed double standards from the DOJ. This was echoed by Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, who regretted that the DOJ had become politicized. And this is from someone who said Trump put his life on the line during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
Tech entrepreneur and long-shot candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is going so far as to try to get other candidates to sign a pledge to pardon Trump if he is convicted. He appeared in court in Miami and made the comments despite being jeered by Trump supporters. telling him to drop out of the race.
One notable change, however, came from Nikki Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador. After initially pointing the finger at the DOJ for “excess prosecution” and accusing her of “political vendetta,” he changed his tune a bit in one appearance Monday on Fox News.
“If this allegation is true, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security,” Haley said (though she was also critical of the DOJ).
But if the candidates running against him and Capitol Hill leaders aren’t willing to speak out forcefully and en masse against Trump, why would anyone expect voters to suddenly change?
Trump, the people they voted to represent them in Congress, and the right-wing media have conditioned them to believe that all of these investigations are targeted, political, and without merit, feeding Trump’s grievance narrative.
3. How will this play with voters?
There is a strange political divergence that has been made possible by the echo chambers of American information.
Republicans, whose main source of information comes from the conservative media, say they believe Trump. But the opposite is true for the rest of the country, including the group of voters who largely decide the election: independents who lean only toward one party or another.
Swing voters view Trump as toxic, and Republican strategists and pollsters say he’s the main reason the party has underperformed in the past three election cycles.
However, this eligibility message has not leaked to the rest of the match.
“There’s this phenomenon that happens every time Trump is impeached or impeached, and I call it the ‘rally-round-Trump effect,’ where voters share their grievance.” GOP pollster Sarah Longwell told NPR’s Morning EditionMonday.
Longwell is not a Trump fan. But he hosts focus groups of Republican voters and is clear-eyed about Trump’s grip on the party. He told Morning Edition that only two of the 50 voters he has spoken to over several months said another impeachment would sway them from Trump. Nine said it would make them love each other more.
In the limited survey since the indictment came out, this has been born. A CBS/YouGov poll found that twice as many likely Republican primary voters said an impeachment would change their outlook for the better (14%) than for the worse (7%). (Sixty-one percent said it would not change their view of him.)
Republican Rep. Ken Buck on CNN said that if Trump is convicted, “I don’t think, I’m certainly not going to support a convicted felon in the White House.”
That could certainly end up being the case for many more Republicans, but as of right now, the GOP base isn’t there yet. The CBS poll found that 80 percent of Republicans said Trump should still be able to be president even if he is convicted.
A minority of Republicans also said they believed it was a national security risk if Trump kept nuclear or military documents, but 80 percent of all others said it was serious. This clearly shows the bifurcation in this political path.
An ABC/Ipsos survey showed that the percentage of people who say this accusation is serious increased from 52% to 61%, compared to the charges in New York stemming from the money payments Trump made to allegedly cover up his affairs.
More than 6 in 10 independents said they believed the charges were serious compared with just over half after the New York indictment in April.
And there was some movement among Republicans, too: 38% described these charges as serious compared to just 21% in April.
But most importantly, there was no statistical change in how many thought Trump should or shouldn’t get paid. It’s almost identical after the New York charges: half say he should be charged, a third or slightly more say he shouldn’t.
And half also believe the charges are politically motivated with independents splitting, signaling a major messaging struggle ahead.
“The question is, how many more indictments are going to come,” Longwell asked, “and is it going to be a case where, because of all of Trump’s legal problems, he’s the only person that’s ever talked about?”
4. What about these other investigations and how long could this all take?
The New York case will go to trial in March of next year, right in the middle of the busiest part of the primary season.
It is not yet known when this document case will go to trial, but it will drag on for at least several months.
In addition, two other criminal investigations remain: a federal one into Trump’s role on January 6, and another in Georgia looking into Trump’s lobbying campaign to try to overturn the results of the presidential election in been
WSB-TV in Atlanta reported on Tuesday that members of the sheriff’s office in Fulton County, Ga., went to Miami to prepare a possible indictment against Trump in his state. It is expected to be known whether charges will be filed in this case in a matter of weeks.
The clock is ticking on the Republican primaries, but the justice system doesn’t necessarily keep pace with politics.
It’s on its own schedule, and Trump will do everything he can to slow things down.
Expect the Trump team to file many motions aimed at dismissing the cases, but also to hold the ball in the hopes that he will win the presidency again and possibly take steps to close these cases and investigations.
One thing is clear: Tuesday’s indictment is not the end of this story.
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