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How 91 felony charges boosted Trump’s standing in the GOP [1]

['Josh Dawsey', 'Hannah Knowles', 'Isaac Arnsdorf', 'Yvonne Wingett Sanchez']

Date: 2023-10-13

David Alexander, an engineer who attended the Iowa Faith and Freedom dinner last month, called the absent Donald Trump “arrogant” and “egotistical” while praising a raft of other Republican presidential candidates who attended. Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter. ArrowRight But he doesn’t blame Trump for skipping the event — and figures the former president is busy defending himself from indictments on 91 criminal charges. The “beating” Trump has taken is a key part of his appeal, Alexander said.

“The people that don’t like him. … When they dislike him, it helps me like him more,” said Alexander, 61, who called Trump his top choice in the 2024 nominating contest. “If they ignored him, I probably wouldn’t like him as much. Does that make sense?”

After Trump was charged with 91 felony counts in four separate cases for allegedly mishandling classified information, obstructing justice, conspiring to overturn the 2020 election and falsifying business records in connection to hush money paid to an adult-film star, the Republican Party seems more wedded to him than ever before. Trump also faces an ongoing civil trial in New York over alleged business fraud by him and his company.

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Instead of voters turning on him because they are appalled by his behavior, fearful he would not be electable or exhausted by his perpetual drama, the indictments have boomeranged to his favor among Republicans, according to voters, polls, strategists in rival campaigns and Trump advisers.

Interviews with scores of voters in multiple states show that Trump’s constant message of victimhood has seeped in not just among the Trump faithful — but also among center-right voters who were previously skeptical of him. Many of the voters echoed his long-running attacks on the law enforcement system that he has sharply ratcheted up in recent months. In many cases, Republicans who said they were initially interested in another candidate more than Trump were dismissive of the seriousness of the charges. Some said they believed Trump had made mistakes, but they contend there was an unfair double standard against him.

In March, when Trump was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York over hush payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, a Washington Post polling average of the GOP primaries had Trump with a 14-percentage-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In June, after a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 40 counts over classified documents and obstructing justice, Trump’s polling primary lead that month grew to 30 points over DeSantis — 53 percent to 23 percent.

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Trump’s lead grew again after he was indicted in both Washington and Georgia over his role in trying to overturn the election, to 41 percentage points over DeSantis. Currently, the Post average shows him ahead 57 percent to 14 percent over DeSantis — a gap of 43 percentage points. Trump also benefited from missteps by DeSantis, whose support has fallen 18 points since March.

“He’s multiplied his support here with indictment after indictment. He’s got better polling numbers because people don’t trust the government,” said Katon Dawson, a former state party chairman in South Carolina who is backing former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley in her presidential bid.

What’s not surprising, Republican strategists and GOP operatives say, is Trump’s biggest supporters would back him no matter what. He famously said he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not face consequences.

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What is different, according to rival campaigns, is that voters they once believed were persuadable now seem less so.

What many in the party fear is that the indictments and civil lawsuits — along with a slew of trials in which allies and current and former advisers highlight damaging information about him on the witness stand — could damage Trump in a general election. Some of the party’s leaders have already begun gaming out a nightmare scenario: He becomes the presumptive nominee and is then convicted of multiple felonies that turn off independent voters, suburban women and other voting blocs where Trump has traditionally struggled. Months of trial coverage filled with testimony from his own advisers could also sap his numbers in a general election. Some rival campaigns assert that the indictments have already shrunk Trump’s ceiling — meaning the highest number of voters he could get in a GOP nominating contest is less than 50 percent now.

Trump’s advisers, however, note recent polls that show him above 50 percent in the primaries and tied or ahead of President Biden in a general election matchup.

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“Americans know this is a witch hunt against President Trump to interfere with the 2024 election,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. “His support has never been stronger, and that’s why he’s leading the primary election by wide margins and beats Joe Biden in the general. Those who say this is a nightmare scenario are actively aiding and abetting Biden and the Democrats, who will do everything, including weaponizing the justice system, to prevent President Trump from taking back the White House.”

‘It’s baked in’

GOP voter sentiment toward the indictments has shaped the responses of Trump’s challengers, who have privately grappled with how aggressively to take him on. Many 2024 foes privately view his criminal liability as fodder for sharp attacks on him — but have watched as the Republican base has seemingly rewarded him for being repeatedly indicted and how Republican crowds have often booed when Trump is criticized.

In August, Fox News anchor Bret Baier seemed to apologize to the audience at the first Republican debate for even mentioning the indictments. As the crowd booed, he urged them to quiet down so they could quickly get through the indictments part of the debate.

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DeSantis advisers said he has declined to attack Trump over the criminal cases — with the exception of some oblique jabs this spring — in part because they’ve made Trump more popular with the GOP. One person close to DeSantis said the campaign viewed each indictment as annoying because it knew there would be a flurry of new polls that showed Trump gaining more ground. People close to DeSantis said they concluded it was smarter to attack Trump on policy issues, such as for not finishing the border wall, for astronomically growing the federal deficit during his presidency and for attacking DeSantis and other Republican governors for signing bills to ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

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A DeSantis spokesman pointed to the governor’s comments that charges against Trump were politically motivated.

Businessman and presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has called for other Republicans to vow to pardon Trump and has said he believes Trump should not have been charged. Others like former vice president Mike Pence have tried a two-step: arguing his conduct disqualifies him to serve as president again but also questioning the need for criminal prosecutions.

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Among the main candidates vying for the nomination, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has stood apart for his unflinching criticism of Trump for his alleged crimes.

Christie has attracted “Never Trump” donors and supporters with his scathing critiques of the former president and has climbed in some polls but still trails Trump and others in the field. He did not respond to requests for comment.

At first, Trump advisers were concerned by the prospect of criminal charges, according to five people close to the former president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details. But the New York case related to payments to Daniels was seen as particularly weak by Republicans and many legal critics, and campaign advisers were pleasantly surprised by how many Republicans defended him after subsequent indictments. Since then, Trump and his advisers have demanded that other Republicans come out in support of Trump against the indictments — even as Trump attacks the other candidates.

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“As for the other candidates, their silence is deafening and the American people will never forget how they refused to fight for the rule of law,” Cheung, the Trump spokesman, said.

The former president has made sharp, and often false, attacks against law enforcement agencies one of the centerpieces of his 2024 campaign message.

The former president’s team broadly views the classified documents case in Florida as the most perilous, but the confluence of indictments has allowed him to cast himself as a victim — a place where he feels politically comfortable — and raise significant amounts of money.

Much of his campaign is now about taking on prosecutors and the Justice Department, and his advisers say he will continue to ratchet up the attacks on the justice system as he faces multiple trials next year.

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“Now, it’s baked in,” one Trump adviser said, adding that fundraising usually spiked after Trump was newly indicted.

‘We just don’t even hear it anymore’

John Nish, an engineering manager from Truro, Iowa, said he is wrestling with his 2024 choice. He may back DeSantis on caucus day if he thinks attacks on Trump have rendered him unelectable. But the more Trump comes under fire, he said, the more energized he is about Trump.

“The closer a person is to God, and the more that they’re trying to do to fulfill God’s plans, and do the right thing, the more Satan attacks him,” Nish said of Trump.

In a series of focus groups conducted by the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project and reviewed by The Post, South Carolina voters who named someone besides Trump as their first 2024 choice became instantly defensive of Trump when asked about indictments.

“A jury could very well find him guilty and he may very well be guilty, but why are they going after him and not everybody else?” a voter named Larry said in a June focus group, after the charges over hush money in New York and the mishandling of classified documents in Florida. “If they’re going to go after him, I want to see him go after the Clintons and I want to see him go after Biden. The fact that they’re just going after Trump, I don’t believe that this should be happening.”

Another participant, Chip, compared Trump’s prosecution to the insider trader conviction of Martha Stewart in 2004.

“She was made to be the example,” he said. “It’s kind of like being the one kid in school and literally everybody did it, and they said, ‘Well, it’s not about them, did you do wrong?’ Well, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to show that he did do wrong, technically. … But there’s nothing you can do about justifying the being singled out.”

A participant named Cheyenne said: “Most of us are just so sick to death and have become deaf because of the constant crucifixion of Trump, and this has gone on now for so many years that we just don’t even hear it anymore. … They’ve just got him under a microscope. They’re just following him around waiting for the next thing they can pin on him.”

For a while, New Jersey attorney Joe Marino thought DeSantis was the best choice for president in 2024. “DeSantis was performing,” he said.

Then, Trump’s indictment changed things.

“I would have preferred DeSantis,” he said. “But I have to support Trump because we have to gain back our country. I only switched over to support Trump because indicting him is an outrage and threatens democracy.”

DeSantis has echoed Trump’s attacks on a so-called deep state within the federal bureaucracy, while also arguing that he would be more effective at combating it and that Trump missed opportunities to do so. DeSantis has said he would dramatically downsize agencies and fire leaders without hesitation.

Don Tapia, a longtime Arizona GOP donor who served as a U.S. ambassador to Jamaica under Trump, said that all of the indictments against the former president have helped drive Republicans like him back to Trump’s corner. Not so long ago, Tapia hoped that Trump’s GOP rivals could make a credible case to primary voters that it was time to look forward, not backward. Tapia had grown frustrated with Trump’s conduct, he said. But no other GOP candidate has stood out, and the raft of charges against Trump have made him look sympathetic to him.

“We’re not a third-world country, and we see these things happen in third-world countries,” said Tapia, 85, who lives in the Phoenix area. “… I think on both sides of the aisle, you’re seeing more people turn towards Trump because of all these indictments.”

Tim Boyle, a conservative-leaning voter from Arizona, said he had been looking for an alternative to the former president — a “younger, better-looking and less obnoxious person.” Boyle, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 because he was confident that he would appoint conservative justices to the Supreme Court that would oppose abortion. But he disliked some of Trump’s rhetoric and policies on immigration, he said.

Even as he ponders voting for a Democrat in 2024, he said, the indictments made him feel sympathy for Trump.

“When he was president, they impeached him twice,” Boyle said. “I’m kind of getting the same feeling about the indictments. Is this just the next thing they’re going to start doing, indicting presidents? I guess I don’t think they’re real — I think they’re more political theater. It does make me think, okay, there’s been something afoot this whole time. If Trump is powerless against the government, what chance does any of us have?”

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[1] Url: https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/10/13/trump-support-indictments/

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