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WASHINGTON – It’s indictment redux for Donald Trump and his 2024 political opponents, and everyone is trying to figure out how it will play politically in next year’s primaries.
As it happened in late March after a New York grand jury indicted him over hush money payments, Trump is playing the victim card while most of his 2024 rivals – but not all – stay mum or even defend him.
Announcing the indictment on his Truth Social website, Trump – who actually gained ground in Republican polls after the New York indictment – claimed without evidence that the Biden administration and Democrats are targeting him via the legal system; he made the same complaint in a fundraising solicitation sent out shortly after his indictment post.
Prosecutors have “INDICTED me in yet another witch hunt regarding documents that I had the RIGHT to declassify as President of the United States,” Trump told potential donors.
Timeline: The journey of Trump’s classified documents
Rivals defend Trump, hit prosecutors
Trump’s closest Republican competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, criticized “the weaponization of federal law enforcement,” but not Trump.
“We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation,” DeSantis tweeted. “Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?”
Other opponents, including Nikki Haley and Mike Pence did not have an immediate comment on Thursday night’s news, and have taken a low-key approach in general to Trump’s legal troubles.
Sen Tim Scott, R-S.C., told Fox News that he will “continue to pray for our nation” and hopes that “justice prevails.” He also stuck up for Trump, saying the nation has seen “weaponization of the Department of Justice against the former president” and “you don’t have to be a Republican to see injustice and want to fix it.”
Pence, the former vice president who officially entered the race just this week, said he hoped the Justice Department would not indict Trump over the documents case, saying it would divisive and “send a terrible message to the wider world.”
Republican congressional leaders also spoke up for Trump (and attacked Biden).
“It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him,” tweeted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades. I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice.”
‘Self-inflicted wounds’
Some long-shot candidates, meanwhile, have said that Trump’s legal problems should be a disqualifier for him, and that this indictment is a reason for him to exit the race.
“While Donald Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence, the ongoing criminal proceedings will be a major distraction,” said former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. “This reaffirms the need for Donald Trump to respect the office and end his campaign.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another recent campaign entrant, said the documents case and other troubles speak to Trump’s irresponsibility and lack of fitness for the office of presidency.
“These are all self-inflicted wounds,” Christie told Fox News on Thursday. “Return the documents and stop doing this. Why do you have to be the center of negative attention all the time? Why do you have to be angry all the time? And that’s what Donald Trump has done.”
Trump is also under investigation over the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden in the state of Georgia.
Another long-shot Republican candidate, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy did defend Trump, accusing the Biden administration of targeting its opponents even as Biden is undergoing a documents investigation of his own.
“We cannot have two tiers of justice,” Ramaswamy said. “One for Trump on government document retention, another for Biden.”
Still too early
It’s too early to say how this indictment might affect the race – the specific charges haven’t been made public yet – but some analysts said the results may be similar to the New York case: Trump may gain with Republicans and suffer with other voters.
Pollster Frank Luntz said Trump has benefitted among Republicans from previous legal actions against him, such as the search of his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla.; the New York indictment; and the civil jury that found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll.
“Every legal action has only made his numbers go up,” Luntz said.
Saying he has never seen a politician play “the victim card” better than Trump, Luntz said that supporters see him “not as a criminal, but as a victim, a victim of persecution.”
How long this lasts remains to be seen; Republicans could actually hold primaries next year with a leading candidate on trial in two states, at least; no one knows how voters might react to that.
“It’s unprecedented,” Luntz said. “This has never happened before.”
Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump political strategist who has conducted numerous focus groups of Republican voters, predicted that indictment will help Trump with GOP primary voters and “hurt him with moderate voters in the general” election.
Perhaps a bigger question, Longwell said, is how his 2024 Republican challengers handle it: “Does anyone have the political talent to seize this as opportunity or will they all line up behind Trump?”
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