Leaning in
So it turns out all these indictments of Trump are Trump’s political strategy.
Donald Trump is intent on leaning into his criminal cases to boost his 2024 campaign through the election next year, according to multiple people close to the former president, after he tested that strategy through multiple indictments and decided it gave him major political advantages.
That’s great. The more of a criminal he is the more votes he gets. What a shining city on a hill we are.
The summer also gave Trump the confirmation that blurring the lines between the legal effort and political effort was perhaps his best overall strategy, in the gamble that he could use the criminal cases to benefit his campaign, which he could then use to benefit himself.
The conclusion has precipitated the joke internally that Trump is not so much running for the White House in 2024 but for his freedom, because were he to win, he could appoint an attorney general to dismiss any pending cases or potentially pardon himself if already convicted.
“Joke”? What joke? Internally or externally? That’s exactly what he plans to do and if he does get elected it’s exactly what he will do. Nobody is joking. Also, funny it isn’t.
Maybe not so much shining as burning. Still bright, but for different reasons.
“To Benefit Himself.” Trump in three words.
The indictments aren’t hurting Trump as much as some people hoped, but I don’t know that they’re actually helping him. You can easily imagine a counterfactual where no charges are brought against Trump, and every time the Democrats argue that Trump is a criminal, voters wonder why he hasn’t been charged and thus dismiss the accusation as mere politics.
Some of this is no doubt him trying to spin all this to keep his cronies in line–“”Don’t worry, this won’t hurt me, in fact it’ll just help me, so don’t desert the ship just yet.”
Another part, though, is just playing into the GOP strategy of the last 40+ years–take an ever-shrinking demographic as your base, but heighten their anger to increase turnout. Of course, suppressing voter turnout among the rest of the population is key to this strategy, and Trump may undermine that effort by being just so awful that he inspires the traditionally apathetic middle to turn out against him.
Finally, never forget that it’s all a grift. He uses his campaign to raise money for his legal struggles, then stiffs his lawyers and keeps the cash. In the end, I’m sure on some level he’s preparing to skip the country with a suitcase full of embezzled cash.
And, then he has this special way of translating “L’Shanah Tovah:”
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-lashes-out-at-liberal-jews-who-voted-to-destroy-america-by-not-supporting-him/
What strategy is he going for here?
Mike,
I don’t think that’s strategy. I think this is an instance where Trump sincerely believes the standard conservative narrative here:
1. A belief that American Jews owe loyalty to Israel
2. A belief that “loyalty to Israel” = “unqualified support for the current Israeli government”
3. A belief that voting for a Democrat is a failure to support the current Israeli government.
Ergo, the logic goes, American Jews who vote Democrat are “disloyal.”