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 has more immediate political problems.
Advisers working for Trump’s opponents face what some see as a maddening task: trying to convince Republican primary voters, accustomed to Mr. Trump’s years of controversy. Trump and deeply distrust the government, that being criminally charged for keeping classified documents is a bad thing.
In earlier times, the impeachment of a presidential candidate would have been, at the very least, a political gift to the other candidates, if not a career-ending event for the accused rival. Competitors would have been thrilled at the prospect of the front-runner spending months tied up in court, with damaging new details constantly leaking out. And they could still be Mr. Trump’s undoing: If he’s not convicted before November 2024, his latest arrest likely won’t win him the general election.
But the competitors of Mr. Trump, counterintuitively, according to the old conventional political wisdom, actually fears what threatens to be an endless cycle of impeachment news that could swallow the summer. His rivals are desperate to get media coverage for their campaigns, but since the indictment became public last Thursday, several advisers muttered, the only way they can get their candidates to credit the television is to answer questions about Mr. trump
Mr. Trump is making full use of the elements of his old office: the big black SUVs; Secret Service agents with dark glasses; stops at grocery stores and restaurants with entourages, bodyguards and reporters in tow, said Katon Dawson, a former chairwoman of the South Carolina Republican Party who is working on Nikki Haley’s campaign.
“That’s a powerful thing when you campaign against it,” Mr. dawson
And there is no end in sight to the impeachment season. It was the second time Mr. Trump has been indicted in two months, and he could be indicted at least once more this summer, in Georgia, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor who leads That research pointed to the timing of his announcement last month that most of his staff would be working remotely for the first three weeks of August, just as Republican presidential candidates prepare for the first debate of the primary season, on august 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.
One Republican candidate who has gotten airtime, Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy businessman and author, flew to Miami from Ohio and addressing the assembled journalists outside the court to record the appearance of Mr. Trump on Tuesday. He promised to pardon Mr. Trump if elected president. He railed against a “donor class” that he said was urging him to disparage Mr. Trump, slammed the media and demanded that all other Republican candidates sign a pledge to pardon Mr. Trump if elected.
“Half the battle is showing up,” Ramaswamy said in an interview Tuesday night en route to Iowa. “I’m getting my message across, at least the part that relates to the events of the day.”
Most of the other rivals of Mr. The Trumps have tied themselves in knots trying to fashion responses to the allegations that would attract media attention without alienating Republican voters who continue to support Mr. trump
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida sided with Mr. Trump, but with little enthusiasm. He subtly reprimanded Mr. Trump, raising Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents as Mr. Trump when he said he would have been “court-martialed in a New York minute” if he had taken classified documents during his Navy service.
But Mr. DeSantis has also used the opportunity to give Republican voters what most of them want: He has defended Mr. Trump and attacked President Biden and his Justice Department, saying they are unfairly targeting Republicans. On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis began doing just that unfold his plan to review the “weaponized” FBI and Justice Department. And the main pro-DeSantis super PAC released a video attacking the “Biden DOJ” for “impeaching the former president.”
Before the indictment was released, former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN that he expected Mr. Trump was not charged because it would be “terribly divisive for the country.”
Mr. Pence then read the indictment. Tuesday, he said The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, “These are very serious allegations. And I cannot defend what is alleged. But the president has a right to his day in court, he has a right to present a defense, and I want to reserve judgment until he has a chance to respond.”
Mr. Pence denounced the Biden administration’s Justice Department as politicized — largely because of its treatment of Mr. Trump — and vowed to clean it up as president.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ms. Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, initially greeted the impeachment with a condemnation of what they called uneven justice — tough on Republicans, lenient on Democrats — before addressing her assessment that the charges against the Mr. Trump was serious and should be taken seriously.
Then on Tuesday, Ms Haley volunteered that if elected she too would consider pardoning Mr Trump.
All these contortions provide an opening for candidates with simpler messages, whether for or against the prosecution of Mr. trump
“I don’t think they 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 spokespeople for the donors who fund them and the consultants who advise them, and the donors and consultants have not yet discovered their advice.”
All of this is presumably music to Mr. Trump: As long as the media and his rivals fight and obsess over him, he must be winning.
The only Republican presidential candidate so far to speak out clearly and forcefully against Mr. Trump for the actions documented in the indictment was former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. He condemned Mr. Trump and showed contempt for Republicans who placed the blame elsewhere.
“We’re in a situation where there are people in my own party who are blaming the DOJ,” Mr. Christie Monday night at a CNN town hall meeting. “And blame him? He has.”
He also implored his fellow competitors to focus on the favorite, not each other, saying that 2024 is playing out like a repeat of 2016 when a large field, which included Mr. Christie, shot each other and let Mr. Trump would gallop. with the nomination.
Tucker Carlson, who was taken off the air by Fox News but remains influential in the Republican base, posted a video on Twitter Tuesday night that captures what Trump’s rivals are up against. Mr. Carlson intended to portray the federal indictment as evidence that Mr. Trump was “the only guy with a real shot at becoming president” who was feared by the Washington establishment. The clip is an implicit rebuke of Mr. DeSantis and close to an endorsement from Mr. trump
It’s too soon after the indictment to draw strong conclusions about how Republican voters are processing the news. But the early data bodes well for Mr. Trump and ominously for his opponents. In a CBS News poll released Sunday, only 7 percent of likely Republican primary voters said the impeachment would lower their opinion of Trump. Twice as many people said the indictment would change their view of him “for the better.”
An adviser to one of Trump’s rivals, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid, admitted he was depressed about how Republican voters were receiving news of what he considered devastating facts uncovered by special counsel Jack Smith.
“I think the reality is that there is such an enormous distrust of the Justice Department and the FBI after the Hillary years and the Russiagate investigation that it seems no other set of facts is going to persuade Republican voters otherwise at this point.” , said the adviser.
Mr. Dawson, who supports Ms. Haley, said it was likely that Mr. Trump will increase in the coming weeks, along with the feeling that the government cannot be trusted.
The other candidates play that they have the luxury of time.
Mr. Christie has stepped up to blood the former president with his attacks, which are unlikely to help Mr. Christie, but who may help other Republicans in the race — those who are abstaining but “drafting” behind Mr. Christie, as one adviser said. this, perhaps wishing, using a horse-racing term.
As more information pours out ahead of the former president’s trial, particularly about the details of what was contained in the classified documents that Mr. Trump kept (details of battle plans and nuclear programs), the gravity of the crimes of which the former president was accused. it can slowly filter out.
That’s the hope, at least, of Mr. Trump that languish way back he in the polls.
“Let this little octopus blow up, then get out of here, let the voters read the term paper and let it sink,” said Mr. dawson He added, from Mr. Trump: “People are going to start questioning their sanity.”
