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Trump's plan to beat the rap is to re-litigate his previous court losses [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-08-04

Donald Trump has a plan for defending himself against federal criminal charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election: keep arguing that he had a right to overturn the 2020 election.

“We will re-litigate every single issue in the 2020 election in the context of this litigation,” Trump attorney John Lauro said on Fox News following the indictment. “It gives President Trump an opportunity that he has never had before, which is to have subpoena power since Jan. 6 in a way that can be exercised in federal court.”

There are some problems with this plan, if what Trump wants to do is win in court and win the 2024 election. Trump and his allies have litigated every single issue they could possibly dream up in the 2020 election. They filed at least 62 lawsuits challenging aspects of the election, and lost 61, with the final one being a modest win at best related to ballot curing in Pennsylvania. Is Trump really planning to defend himself against federal criminal charges with a set of arguments that has already lost 60 times in civil suits? Do his lawyers think that’s their best legal case here?

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It’s also not a great plan to boost Republican chances in 2024. “If this is the conversation we’re going to have over the next year and a half, it’s going to be tough for Republicans, particularly in suburban areas,” said Michael Duncan, a Republican digital operative allied with Mitch McConnell on his “Ruthless” podcast this week, arguing that Trump’s election denial cost Republicans the Senate in 2022. That downplays the role of abortion bans in the midterms, but election denial surely played a role.

Trump seems to enjoy nurturing his grievances, repeating his 2020 whines again and again, and a core of his base eats it up. But it’s not a message with widespread appeal, and becomes less so with every year that passes. Trump’s state of mind as he faces dozens of federal felony charges, including these ones that directly lead him to revisit the months after his 2020 loss, is another concern for Republicans trying to win in 2024.

The more Trump thinks about it, the angrier he’s most likely going to get. That anger will be amplified as he’s made to sit and wait for a judge who then calls him “Mr. Trump,” or as his motorcade gets stuck in traffic or his plane waits on the runway because he no longer has the little people cleared out of the way for him at all times. Those are all things that happened on Thursday, and they’re all things that will repeat as his cases make their way through the legal system, and every one of them will eat at him. That’s likely to mean more campaign rally rants narrowly focused on himself and the past. More festering resentments against insufficiently loyal Republicans, leading to more outbursts against not just his presidential primary opponents but against congressional leaders and state officials who don’t endorse him fast enough or embrace his lies loudly enough. An angry Trump is one prone to lashing out at his own party.

If Republicans are fretting about being forced to focus on Trump’s lies about his loss again, Democrats are poised between pleasure that an opponent is dragging himself down and concern for the democracy he’s undermining. “Swing voters in a general election are not looking for celebration of an attempt to overturn an election and overthrow a government,” Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told The Washington Post. “Swing voters and voters generally take our democracy very seriously and don’t want their votes to be made irrelevant by politicians that want to overturn elections.”

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/4/2185171/-Trump-plans-to-keep-dragging-Republicans-back-to-2020

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