How Trump Plans to Beat His Indictment, Politically

Donald Trump will make his first appearance in federal criminal court today. But the former president has been pleading his case for days in a far friendlier venue — the court of Republican public opinion, where he continues to dominate the 2024 field.

For Trump and his team, there has been a sense of familiarity, even normalcy, in the chaos of facing a 37-count indictment in the classified documents case. After two House impeachments, multiple criminal investigations, the jailing of his business’s former accountant, his former fixer and his former campaign manager, and now two criminal indictments, Trump knows the drill, and so do his supporters.

The playbook is well-worn: Play the victim. Blame the “deep state.” Claim selective prosecution. Punish Republicans who stray for disloyalty. Dominate the news. Ply small donors for cash.

His allies see the indictment as a chance to end the primary race before it has even begun in the minds of Republican voters by framing 2024 as an active battle with President Joe Biden. Until now, the main pro-Trump super PAC, MAGA Inc., has focused heavily on Trump’s chief Republican rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in its $20 million of ad spending. But that messaging has shifted after the indictment, with a new commercial already being shown that pits Trump directly against Biden.

The intended effect, said a person familiar with the strategy, is to present Trump as the party’s leader and the presumptive nominee who has already entered a head-to-head battle with Biden and his Justice Department, making Trump’s Republican opponents look small by comparison.

Trump, who flew to Florida on Monday before his Tuesday appearance, is determined to serve as narrator of his own high-stakes legal drama. He posted on Truth Social to reveal he had been indicted minutes after his lawyer had called to alert him last week.

“The only good thing about it is it’s driven my poll numbers way up,” Trump told the Georgia Republican Party in a combative speech Saturday.

So far, the indictment fallout appears to be moving along two parallel tracks in different directions, one political, the other legal.

Politically, Trump has continued to consolidate Republican support. In a CBS News poll Sunday, only 7% of likely Republican primary voters initially said the indictment would change their view of Trump for the worse — and twice as many said it would change their view “for the better.” Eighty percent of likely Republican voters said Trump should be able to serve even if convicted.

Legally, the specificity and initial evidence presented in the charging document that was unsealed Friday showed the gravity of the case.

That evidence includes a recording of Trump claiming to have a classified document in front of him and acknowledging he no longer had the power to declassify it, photographs of documents strewn across a storage-room floor — which Trump was particularly rankled by — surveillance footage, reams of subpoenaed texts from his own aides and notes from his own lawyer. “If even half of it is true, then he’s toast,” Bill Barr, who served as attorney general under Trump, said on Fox News. “It’s very, very damning.”

As he headed to Miami, Trump was working to reassemble a legal team shaken by two major resignations Friday as the special counsel who brought the charges, Jack Smith, said he would push for a “speedy trial.”

For Trump, who has long blurred public-relations woes and legal peril, his 2024 campaign began in part as a shield against prosecution, and victory at the ballot box would amount to the ultimate acquittal. Still, few political strategists in either party see running while under indictment as a way to appeal to the independent voters who are crucial to actually winning the White House.

But Trump has rarely looked past the task immediately in front of him, and for now, that is the primary. The CBS News poll showed him dominating his closest rival, DeSantis, 61% to 23%.

On Sunday night, MAGA Inc. CEO Taylor Budowich, sent a memo of talking points to surrogates that tellingly does not mention DeSantis at all, only Biden.

The uncomfortable initial posture of Trump’s rivals was captured in a video released by DeSantis’ super PAC attacking the “Biden DOJ” for “indicting the former president.” Trump’s team was delighted to see it, even if the ad cast DeSantis as the man to clean house inside the federal government.

As the Trump team sees it, forcing rivals to rally around Trump is a reaffirmation of the former president’s place at the head of the GOP.

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