Indictment would help Trump; is that what Democrats want?
WASHINGTON >> Former representative Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) understands the cynical depths to which Democrats will go to win elections. After he voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Democrats spent $425,000 on ads to boost Meijer’s election-denying, Trumpbacked MAGA opponent in the GOP primary as a “poison pill” candidate — and helped him defeat Meijer. So, we should listen when he warns that indicting Trump over alleged hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels would be “a billion-dollar gift-in-kind from Democrats to Trump’s ’24 campaign.”
Gov. Chris Sununu (R) of New
Hampshire says “a lot of the Democrats have misplayed this in terms of building sympathy for the former president.”
But have they?
The legal case against Trump is incredibly flimsy. As constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley correctly points out, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg is taking a charge “that has a statute of limitations of two years and trying to bring it back to life seven years later” while attempting to “litigate a federal crime that the federal government didn’t feel needed to be litigated” — all in the run-up to a presidential election. It is, Turley says, a “patently political prosecution.” No one not named “Donald Trump” would be indicted on these charges.
Who knows, maybe a New York jury would find Trump guilty anyway — or if it did, maybe the case would be overturned on appeal. It is unlikely Trump would ultimately be convicted of a felony, and thus disqualified from the presidency. But this much is certain: Indicting Trump will cause many Republicans, including some who have been open to a different nominee, to rally around him and help him win the GOP nomination. And that may be exactly what many Democrats want.
Democrats have won the past two elections running against Trump. In 2020, Biden won not by convincing Americans they needed more government spending and open borders, but by promising a Trump-exhausted electorate that he would end the chaos and unite the country. Then, in the 2022 midterms, Democrats successfully papered over the serial disasters unleashed on Biden’s watch by running against, and in some cases spending tens of millions of dollars amplifying, Trump-backed MAGA candidates. If Trump wins the 2024 GOP nomination, Democrats have good reason to believe they can win a third election running against him.
A Trump indictment would help them do so in two ways: First, it would increase Trump’s toxicity with swing voters. A trial would provide them with a daily reminder of his moral turpitude — how he allegedly had an affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and then paid her to cover it up. And it would give Trump ample opportunities to further repulse them with outrageous diatribes against what he calls the “Stormy ‘Horse Face’ Daniels extortion plot.”
Second, an indictment would encourage Republicans to nominate the man Democrats consider the most beatable candidate. Most Republicans — including those open to supporting another GOP nominee in 2024 — don’t share the left’s hatred for Trump. A January USA Today/Ipsos poll found that 74 percent of Republican voters had a favorable view of Trump. But right now, 74 percent of Republicans are not supporting Trump’s candidacy.
If Trump is indicted, that could change. Even Republicans who don’t love Trump object to seeing the justice system weaponized to go after political opponents.