How a federal indictment could help Trump in the GOP primary — and hurt him in the general election
Trump could maintain his grip on the GOP through the primary season, even as the cases against him proceed in court and the prospect of prison time looms.
For much of the past winter, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign plodded along with little energy, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis increasingly seemed like the mainstream choice for the GOP nomination.
Then came Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump on charges of financial fraud related to a payment he had made several years before to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Suddenly, conservatives rallied to Trump’s side. And they have stayed with him ever since, even as other candidates have entered the race, giving voters plenty of other options. Trump is now the Republican frontrunner by a wide margin.
Last week’s federal indictment on 37 counts related to Trump’s handling of classified documents is more serious than the Manhattan case, and, if convicted, could send Trump to prison for more than a century.
Yet as grave as those charges are, could the new indictment actually help Trump politically?
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Indictments are bad …
Trump is the first former president to be indicted on federal charges. Special counsel Jack Smith has promised a “speedy trial,” which will likely take place as Trump tries to cement his standing as the GOP frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.
If national politics is a game of inches, how can a federal indictment that includes photographs of secret documents stored in a bathroom amount to anything less than a 37-yard penalty?
“I don’t know if it will make a difference in the political landscape, but it certainly seems pretty bad,” a Senate Republican aide told The Hill. Another GOP staffer mused that Smith’s indictment could be the “silver bullet” that ends Trump’s third White House run.
A recent poll by Yahoo News and YouGov found that 62% of Americans do not want Trump to serve a second term if he is convicted of a crime. Given the strength of Smith’s evidence (photographs, audio recordings, text messages), such a conviction is entirely possible — and maybe even likely.
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…except when it comes to the GOP primary
Even before the federal indictment, Trump was a twice-impeached former president who many believe incited the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In addition to the Manhattan and federal indictments, he is facing potential charges in Georgia for attempting to meddle with the state’s results in the 2020 presidential election.
To his supporters, none of that seems to matter. Earlier this year, pollsters found that about 30% of the GOP electorate said that they supported Trump more than the Republican Party itself.
Many of Trump’s supporters have an emotional, even spiritual, identification with the president that has little to do with policy. During two political rallies over the weekend, Trump described the indictment as an attack on his supporters.
“In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,” he said in Georgia. The grievance-heavy message was potent in 2016, and could be again in 2024.
“This is more of a movement than a person,” a Republican in South Carolina told USA Today. No matter how damning, the indictment may well fail to break Trump’s bond with his supporters. After all, nothing else has.
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Other candidates are at a loss
Even if federal prosecutors move quickly, a trial could be months away.
In the meantime, Trump’s challengers for the GOP primary have a close-to-impossible task before them: They need to reassure his supporters that they stand with the embattled former president. At the same time, they also have to convince those voters to vote for them instead of Trump.
The last several days have been a preview of how difficult that might be. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson bluntly said that the indictment disqualified Trump from ever setting foot in the Oval Office again, while former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called the charges "devastating."
But they are both polling in the low single digits and have little to lose.
Candidates with better chances at the nomination have done their best to acknowledge the gravity of the situation without actually blaming Trump. DeSantis railed against “weaponizing the power of the state” without mentioning Trump by name; Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a favorite of the GOP establishment, said mostly the same thing on Fox News.
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, went slightly further than DeSantis and Scott, judging Trump “incredibly reckless” — if the indictment "is true."
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Peril in the general election
Trump could maintain his grip on the Republican Party through the primary season, even as the cases against him proceed in court and the prospect of prison time looms.
But then will come the general election — and, potentially, new troubles. A recent poll of Utah voters found that 51% of independents would be less likely to vote for Trump because of the indictment. Unlike the GOP faithful, many of them see no reason to stand by a man who could soon be a convicted felon.
“For people who were on the fence about Trump, this may push them away. Enough of the chaos and craziness,” one influential Republican donor told the Associated Press.
So far, Biden has said nothing about the indictment, insisting that the Department of Justice should work in complete independence. But if he is to face Trump in the general election, his message could be relatively straightforward: Vote for the guy who definitely isn’t going to prison.
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