Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Donald Trump long predicted that his MAGA followers would rush to his defense if an indictment against him materialized. What became clear over the weekend was how quickly the rest of the Republican Party might follow.<\/p>\n
After the former president broadcast his prediction<\/a> that he would be arrested Tuesday and called for his base to protest, former Vice President Mike Pence said the case<\/a> \u201creeks\u201d of \u201cpolitical prosecution.\u201d House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called it \u201can outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA<\/a>.\u201d Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said a Manhattan district attorney\u2019s expected effort to bring a criminal charge over Trump\u2019s handling of a hush money payment during his 2016 campaign was only evidence of how<\/a> \u201cafraid\u201d Democrats are of the former president.<\/p>\n By late Saturday, Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur and longshot presidential contender, was injecting the issue directly into the campaign, calling on the rest of the Republican field<\/a> to join him in demanding that prosecutors \u201cabandon the political persecution through prosecution\u201d of Trump.<\/p>\n Sensing an opening, Trump\u2019s campaign began to turn the impending indictment<\/a> into a litmus test for the rest of the field: either defend the ex-president, they warned, or be labeled a leftist sympathizer.<\/p>\n Even Trump\u2019s GOP detractors began to see the writing on the wall.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s become the new Teflon president<\/a>,\u201d said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party and a longtime critic of Trump. \u201cHe is someone who has built his entire political empire on being the victim all the time, and being the martyr, and this is just another example.\u201d<\/p>\n For the duration of the Trump era, Trump has sought to turn one seemingly disqualifying scandal after another into his benefit. Sometimes he\u2019s succeeded (the Access Hollywood tape was not the dagger everyone expected it to be), sometimes he\u2019s struggled (the aftermath of the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 remains largely unkind). In each case, he\u2019s survived.<\/p>\n The expected, coming indictment will test that once more; though, so far, the timing could hardly be better for him. If he is arrested this week, it will once more frame the early stages of the presidential primary around him, just as Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and several other high-profile Republicans consider launching their own campaigns.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems very evident that the left is trying everything they can to discredit former President Donald Trump,\u201d said Bruce Cherry, chair of Seminole County Republican executive committee in Florida, who said the \u201cbest possible ticket this country could have\u201d would be Trump as the presidential nominee alongside DeSantis, as his running mate. \u201cThe indictment, I feel, doesn\u2019t mean anything.\u201d<\/p>\n If anything, Republicans say, Trump will benefit from a short-term rush of support, much as he did following the FBI\u2019s seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate last year. It may not manifest itself in national polls \u2014 where independent and Democratic voters will be reminded of the drama and scandals that seem to perpetually follow Trump. But one national GOP strategist, granted anonymity to discuss the political fallout, said the ex-president would likely enjoy an immediate fundraising boost in an otherwise unfriendly political environment.<\/p>\n \u201cSmall-dollar donors are down,\u201d this person said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to motivate them. It proves there is a witch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n On right-wing social media channels<\/a> over the weekend, some Trump supporters were debating the merits of violent versus nonviolent protest, loosely contemplating a trucker strike or a bank run while others warned of a deep state \u201ctrap.\u201d Unlike legal challenges Trump faces in Fulton County, Ga., and in a special counsel probe around Jan. 6, the case in New York is coming from a district attorney in Manhattan, viewed by many Republicans as an epicenter of the excesses of the left.<\/p>\n \u201cIn this case, I think Republicans will rally around Trump initially,\u201d said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. \u201cLong-term, it depends on what happens with this case, as well as the other criminal investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n If Trump ends up facing multiple indictments, Ayres said, it\u2019s possible that primary voters who are at least open to other Republican presidential candidates will see him as having too much \u201cbaggage.\u201d But, he cautioned, no one fully can understand how it will all play out. After all, it\u2019s never happened before.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never studied the indictment of a former president and leading presidential candidate,\u201d Ayres said, \u201cand I\u2019ve never done any polling on the indictment of a former president and leading presidential candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n One nagging fear of some Trump critics is that the case against him may prove to be weak, and that beating it could further embolden him. Former Rep. Peter Meijer, the Michigan Republican who lost his primary last year after voting to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 riot, said \u201cbullshit Dem crusades help Trump in his primary, which, if he wins, helps Dems by getting the weakest GOP candidate to the general.\u201d<\/p>\n