Trump’s legal woes help in primaries, hurt in the general election

Will Donald Trump’s arrest and indictment help him or hurt him in 2024? This is a question that so many people have been speculating about and asking me about. 

And the answer is, it depends what you mean by help. So let’s talk about it in terms of the Republican primary, and then separately, in terms of the general election. In the Republican primary, the 34 felony counts against Donald Trump — which he was arrested for, and then he went to Mar-a-Lago and gave a speech and now we’re starting to move forward and learn more about that case — I believe that that will help Trump in the immediate future for the Republican primary. 

And there’s two primary reasons why that’s the case. Number one, the focus on Trump’s arrest and indictment has completely smothered Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSantis, who was getting great press, his book tour and all these different things early in 2023. Who’s talking about Ron DeSantis lately? Very few people, because the news has been stuffed, just packed full of Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. And when you’re trying to — we don’t know if DeSantis will run, but when you’re potentially trying to run, you need media attention. That was useful to Trump in the 2016 Republican primary starting in 2015, and DeSantis, all of a sudden, has been cut from the siphon of media attention. That’s one reason why the Trump arrest helps Trump. 

Second reason is that it actually is firing up some Trump supporters and they’re giving him money. Now, a few million bucks to a billionaire … should it make a difference? No, but Trump’s constantly grifting money. And it is true that fundraising numbers accelerated dramatically after Donald Trump was arrested. 

So in the immediate, this is helpful for Trump in the primary. Now, how could this change? We believe there may be more arrests and indictments coming against Donald Trump. One of them might be at the end of April, and it might come out of Fulton County, Georgia. We have the federal investigation. We have the investigation related to the search warrant served at Mar-a-Lago where all the documents were found. 

Just because the New York City arrest and indictment — seen by many on the right as an unfair and weak political attack on Trump — just because that one’s helping Trump doesn’t mean one, two or three more arrests, potentially with more serious charges, are actually going to help Donald Trump and in fact, it may become so much that even within the Republican primary, it starts to make Trump seem a little chaotic … maybe we don’t want to support him. And more importantly, from a logistical standpoint, it may be tough for Trump to balance two or three or four criminal cases and run for the Republican primary. 

So that could turn negative. That’s the primary. Let’s now go to the second bucket, which is the general election. I have no reason to believe, and I have seen no evidence that this indictment helps Trump get even a single new vote in the general election in 2024 that he didn’t already have in 2020. At the national level, to win in 24, if he’s the nominee, Trump needs to find new voters he didn’t have in 2020. I can’t think of any reason why someone who didn’t vote Trump in the general in 2020 is going to see the arrest and the indictment and say, oh, you know what, now I am going to vote for Donald Trump. And Trump needs to find voters like that. And in fact, independents may see this all as very chaotic. And say I’m either staying home or voting for whoever is the Democratic nominee. So while it may well be useful in the primary, I don’t think this indictment is at all helpful to Trump in the general election. 

Now, one other thing on timing and logistics. When Trump was arrested, I mentioned these cases take a long time, and typically, criminal defendants want to delay, delay, delay. There’s many reasons why you want to delay: evidence can be lost, prosecutorial priorities can change and the case might be dropped, witnesses can die, you know, all sorts, all sorts of different things can happen. In this particular case, right now, the timing is the next court appearance would be December of this year. It’s very likely that it gets pushed to January or February of 2024 because Trump’s lawyers have already said they would like to do that. There may be a further delay or the next stage in the case might not be until spring of 2024. That is the middle of the Republican primary. And so from a logistical standpoint, that can start to interfere. If you’re trying to go all around the country to do rallies, but you have court appearances in different parts of the country for different criminal cases, that’s not useful helpful or convenient for campaigning and that’s another factor that has to be kept in mind.