Raid rallies GOP behind ex-president
NEW YORK — For much of the year, small cracks in Donald Trump’s political support have been growing.
Dissatisfied Republican primary voters began to consider new presidential prospects. GOP donors grappled with damaging revelations uncovered by the Jan. 6 committee. Several party leaders pondered challenging Trump for the party’s 2024 nomination.
But after the FBI executed a search warrant at his Florida estate, the Republican Party unified swiftly behind the former president.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who likely represents Trump’s strongest potential primary challenger, described the Biden administration as a “regime” and called Monday’s Mar-a-Lago search for improperly taken classified documents “another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.”
The GOP push to portray Trump as the victim of a politicized Justice Department ignored the potential criminal misconduct that justified the search in the eyes of a federal judge. It overlooked Trump’s role in hiring now-vilified FBI Director Chris Wray, who also served as a high-ranking official in a Republican-led Justice Department. The Biden White House, meanwhile, said it had no prior knowledge of the search.
But the robust defense serves as a fresh reminder of the former president’s enduring grip on the GOP, driven by an ability to use a sense of grievance among many Republican voters toward government and other institutions. Trump tapped into that animosity to overcome two impeachments and the fallout from an insurrection. His allies said Tuesday that the FBI search would only strengthen his position again.
“The sooner he kicks off his campaign, the better,” Indiana GOP Rep. Jim Banks, the chair of the Republican Study Committee, said in an interview.
Banks was among about a dozen Republican lawmakers who spent several hours Tuesday evening with Trump at his summer home in Bedminster, New Jersey. During a meal that included steak, scallops, mashed potatoes, salad and a Trump cookie, the group talked about the upcoming midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race, Banks said.
The former president told the lawmakers “his mind is made up” about a 2024 campaign and “we’ll all be happy with his decision.”
The FBI search seemed to trigger a shift among Trump’s advisers, who had been privately urging him to wait until after the midterm elections to announce his intention to seek the presidency again. Suddenly, some of those same advisers were urging him to launch his campaign before the November elections.
Trump stoked such speculation in the hours after the search by posting a campaign-style video on social media. “The best is yet to come,” he said.
He followed up with a fundraising appeal, making it personal by declaring “it’s important that you know that it wasn’t just my home that was violated — it was the home of every patriotic American who I have been fighting for.”