Former President and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump arrives at a watch party during the 2024 Iowa Republican presidential caucuses in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 15, 2024.
Early in 2023, it looked as though Republicans might be ready to move on from Donald Trump.
The former president’s poll numbers were sagging, suggesting that his party might be weighing his faults and foibles after Jan. 6 and disappointing results in the 2022 midterms. Surveys showed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis closing in on Trump among Republican voters — and even beating him in a poll or two.
In late March, though, everything began to change. That’s when we learned that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had secured an indictment of Trump for allegedly making hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump surged in polls.
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Here’s NBC News polling analyst Steve Kornacki describing what happened on air earlier this week: “Look where the Trump line takes off. Look where the DeSantis line kind of flatlines and nobody’s moved up. What week was that? That is literally the week that Donald Trump was indicted on the first of the charges in Manhattan on the Stormy Daniels matter.”
Kornacki went on to describe the rally-around effect and how a significant number of Republicans, convinced Bragg and other Democrats were using the legal system to unfairly target Trump, have stuck with him since.
That brings us to Trump’s domination of the Iowa caucus, which he won with 51 percent of the vote. Barring something unexpected, he’s likely to cakewalk to the Republican nomination, setting him up to retake the presidency.
Now, it is possible that all this would have happened without Bragg’s indictment of Trump, or that subsequent indictments of Trump would have rallied Republicans to his cause, resulting in the same landslide Iowa win. It is also possible that DeSantis and the other challengers for the nomination were not up to the task of beating Trump, and it was only a matter of time until they faded into irrelevance.
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But it might be that the relatively weak and tawdry nature of Bragg’s case fueled suspicions that it was politically motivated, got Trump rolling and undermined the stronger and vastly more important indictments that followed — the ones centered on Jan. 6 and Trump’s treasonous election malfeasance. In which case, Bragg handed Trump a tremendous gift.
It is interesting to remember that Bragg initially seemed unwilling to indict Trump, only to reverse course after his refusal to move forward with a separate case sparked criticism, resignations and significant political pressure. Ultimately, the district attorney came up with 34 counts that accused Trump of unduly influencing the 2016 election by keeping Daniels quiet.
Bragg described the move as part of his “solemn responsibility to show that everybody stands equal before the law.” That’s a valid principle, of course. It certainly sounds good.
Yet Bragg almost certainly would not have bothered with the case had it involved anybody but Donald Trump, who had announced his White House bid just a few months earlier. To the point, data from the state Office of Court Administration showed that the Manhattan district attorney’s office rarely prosecutes cases like the one filed against Trump.
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I argued at the time of the indictment that Bragg’s case was reckless, given that even many Democrats worried that it was unprecedented, untested and flimsy. Trump’s subsequent domination of the GOP race suggests that “reckless” should have been paired with “harebrained” and maybe an expletive or two.
What was Bragg thinking? Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone?
Indicting a former president of the United States is so momentous a thing that the case should be rock-solid and massively consequential. The Bragg case has never met that standard. Neither has the civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which accuses Trump of inflating his net worth to obtain better terms from banks and insurers.
Both New York cases are diversions that allow Trump to make the usual “witch hunt” arguments and lead voters to think he has a point. Both undermine not only more substantial allegations against Trump but also the claim that MAGA-world is uniquely threatening to democracy. Many Americans, after all, will conclude that politically motivated legal cases against former presidents (or simply removing him from the ballot) are also a threat to democracy.
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That highlights one of the funny/terrifying things about Trump: His gleeful obliteration of democratic norms often leads his opponents to do the same, creating a downward spiral that somehow makes Trump stronger. It is all part of a great unraveling, leading us to nowhere good.
Churchill: New York's gift to Donald Trump
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25.01.2024
Former President and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump arrives at a watch party during the 2024 Iowa Republican presidential caucuses in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 15, 2024.
Early in 2023, it looked as though Republicans might be ready to move on from Donald Trump.
The former president’s poll numbers were sagging, suggesting that his party might be weighing his faults and foibles after Jan. 6 and disappointing results in the 2022 midterms. Surveys showed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis closing in on Trump among Republican voters — and even beating him in a poll or two.
In late March, though, everything began to change. That’s when we learned that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had secured an indictment of Trump for allegedly making hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump surged in polls.
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Article continues below this ad
Here’s NBC News polling analyst Steve Kornacki describing what happened on air earlier this week: “Look where the Trump line takes off. Look where the DeSantis line kind of flatlines and nobody’s moved up. What week was that? That is literally the week that Donald Trump was indicted on the first of the charges in Manhattan on the........
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