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 is in the most immediate political turmoil.
Advisers working for Mr. Trump’s opponents face what some consider a daunting task: trying to woo Republican primary voters, accustomed to years of controversies with Mr. .Trump and increasingly mistrust the government, which has been criminally indicted for withholding classified documents. a bad thing.
In past times, the indictment of a presidential candidate was, at the very least, a political gift for other candidates, if not an event that ended the run of the accused rival. Competitors would have been delighted at the prospect of months of spending on the front-runner tied up in court, with damaging new details constantly trickling out. And they still can be Mr. Trump to eliminate: If he is not convicted before November 2024, his latest arrest is unlikely to convert him to the general election.
But Mr. Trump’s competitors — counterintuitively, according to the old conventional wisdom of politics — actually fear what threatens to become an endless news cycle of accusations that could engulf the ting – heat. His opponents are desperate to get media coverage for their campaigns, but since the accusation became public on Thursday, as many advisers grumbled, the only way they can book their candidates on television is answering questions about Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump makes full use of the trappings of his former office: the big, black sport utility vehicles; the Secret Service agents in dark glasses; the stops at grocery stores and restaurants with entourages, bodyguards and reporters in tow, said Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who worked on Nikki Haley’s campaign.
“That’s a powerful thing when you campaign against it,” Mr. Dawson said.
And there is no end in sight for the accusatory era. This is the second time that Mr. Trump for 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 leading the investigation signaled the timing when he announced last month that most of his staff would work remotely for the first three weeks of August — when Republican presidential candidates prepare for the primary. debate in the primary season, in August. 23 in Milwaukee.
In the federal case of Mr. Trump, in South Florida, it is possible that the former president could face a trial in the middle of the primary campaign period.
One Republican candidate who got airtime, Vivek Ramaswamy, a wealthy businessman and author, did so by flying to Miami from Ohio and addressed the assembled reporters outside the court to record the arraignment of Mr. Trump on Tuesday. He promised to forgive Mr. Trump if he is elected president. He criticized a “donor class” that he said urged him to reject Mr. Trump, slammed the news media and demanded that every GOP candidate sign a pledge to pardon Mr. Trump. Trump if elected.
“Half the battle is showing up,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in an interview Tuesday night on his way to Iowa. “I have taken my message, at least that part of it that relates to the events of the day.”
Most of the other opponents of Mr. Trump has tied himself up in trying to craft responses to the charges that will garner media attention without alienating Republican voters who remain supportive of Mr. Trump.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida came to the side of Mr. Trump but little enthusiasm. He subtly criticized the behavior of Mr. Trump, raising Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents as a stand-in for Mr. Trump when he said that he would be “court-martialled in a minute in New York” if he obtained classified documents during his service in the Navy.
But Mr. DeSantis also used the opportunity to give Republican voters what they wanted: He defended Mr. Trump and attacked President Biden and his Justice Department, saying they unfairly targeted those Republican. On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis began rolling out his plan to overhaul the “armed” FBI and Justice Department. And the main pro-DeSantis super PAC released a video attacking the “Biden DOJ” for “indicting the former president.”
Before the indictment was released, former Vice President Mike Pence said on CNN that he hoped Mr. Trump would not be indicted because it would be “very damaging to the country.”
Then Mr. Pence read the charge. On Tuesday, he told the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, “These are serious allegations. And I cannot defend what was said. But the president has a right to his day in court, he has a right to bring a defense , and I’d like to reserve judgment until he’s had a chance to respond.
Mr. Pence criticized the Biden administration’s Justice Department for being politicized — in large part because of its treatment of Mr. Trump — and promised that as president he would clean it up.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Ms. Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, initially welcomed the indictment with condemnation of what she called unfair justice – harsh for Republicans, lenient for Democrats – before laying out her assessment that the accusations against Mr. Trump are serious and should be taken seriously.
Then, on Tuesday, Ms. Haley volunteered that if elected she, too, would consider pardoning Mr. Trump.
All the contortions offer an opening to candidates with simpler messages, either for or against the prosecution of Mr. Trump.
“I don’t think they know what they’re thinking yet,” Mr. Ramaswamy said of the candidates he called the “finger-in-the-wind class.” Some candidates “tend to serve as mouthpieces for the donors who fund them and the consultants who advise them, and the donors and consultants have not yet considered their advice.”
All this must be music to the ears of Mr. Trump: As long as the news media and his opponents are fighting each other and raving about him, he should win.
The only Republican presidential candidate so far to speak out clearly and forcefully against Mr. Trump over the actions documented in the indictment is former Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. He condemned Mr. Trump and showed disdain for Republicans who directed the blame elsewhere.
“We’re in a situation where there are people in my own party who blame the DOJ,” Mr. Christie said Monday night at a CNN town hall meeting. “How to blame him? He did it.”
He also asked his fellow competitors to focus on the front-runner, not each other, saying that 2024 plays like a rerun of 2016 when a large field, which includes Mr. Christie, sniping at each other and letting Mr. Trump to run away. with the nomination.
Tucker Carlson, who was taken off the air by Fox News but remains influential among the Republican base, released a video on Twitter late Tuesday that captured what Mr. Trump’s opponents were up against. mr. Carlson seeks to describe the federal indictment as proof that Mr. Trump is “someone who has a real shot at being president” that the Washington establishment fears. The clip is an implied rebuke of Mr. DeSantis and almost an endorsement of Mr. Trump.
It’s too soon after the indictment to draw firm conclusions about how Republican voters are processing the news. But the early data is good for Mr. Trump and terrible 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 Mr. Trump. Twice as many said the accusation would change their view of him “for the better.”
An adviser to one of Mr. Trump’s opponents, who spoke on condition of anonymity, admitted frankly that he was saddened by how Republican voters received news of what he considered damaging facts that unearthed by special counsel, Jack Smith.
“I think the reality is that there is such a great distrust of the Justice Department and the FBI after the Hillary years and the Russiagate investigation that there appears to be no other set of facts that will appeal to voters in Republican if not now,” said the adviser.
Mr. Dawson, who supports Ms. Haley, said the poll numbers of Mr. Trump is likely to rise in the coming weeks, along with sentiment that the government can’t be trusted.
Some candidates gamble that they have the luxury of time.
Mr. Christie has elevated the bloody former president in his attacks, which likely won’t help Mr. Christie’s standing but may help other Republicans in the race: those holding back but “drafting” behind Mr. Christie, as one adviser put it. it is, perhaps fancied, using the term horse racing.
While more information has come out before the trial of the former president, especially about the details of what is in the classified documents held by Mr. Trump — details of war plans and nuclear programs — the gravity of the crimes charged against the former president. may penetrate slowly.
That’s the hope, at least, for Mr. Trump’s opponents who are trailing far behind him in the polls.
“Let that little pop go off, then get out of here, let the voters read the term paper, and let it sink in,” Mr. Dawson said. He added, of Mr. Trump: “People will start to question his sanity.”
