Is Trump Shooting Himself in the Foot?

TRUMP INDICTMENTS

Trump faces 91 criminal counts in 4 indictments issued in 4 different jurisdictions.

1. New York (Alvin Bragg, States Attorney, State of NY: Stormy Daniels hush money case),
2. Florida (Jack Smith, Special Counsel DOJ: Mar-a-Lago documents case),
3. Washington, DC (Jack Smith Special Counsel DOJ: January 6 Insurrection case), and
4. Georgia (Fani Willis, States Attorney, State of Georgia: Georgia Fake Elector Scheme and Insurrection case).

How is Trump navigating these escalating criminal matters as he gears up for the 2024 election?

TRUMP CAN’T STOP BEING TRUMP

The simple answer is that Trump. as usual, is being Trump. He is raging and yelling and having temper tantrums. He is trying to rile up his base and instigate acts of domestic terrorism. He is lobbing social media attacks at the prosecutors, judges, witnesses as well as attacking grand jury members in an effort to taint the jury pool and scare witnesses out of testifying against him. He is assaulting the judicial system that is trying to hold him accountable.

Trump has ALREADY tampered with the jury pool and intimidated witnesses because anyone who would dare to testify against him in these trials must be fearful that they will be harassed and attacked by his base which has been given permission by Trump to do just that. We have seen this play before from Trump. His base acts as his goon squad. He has threatened potential witnesses by saying:  “If you go after me, I will go after you”. Over social media, Trump tampered with a witness in the Georgia case, Geoff Duncan, the former Lt Governor of Georgia.

Trump said:

“I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t,”  

Could that be construed as a threat? Yes, it could be. But as usual, Trump gives himself plausible deniability.

Duncan responded.

Duncan urged “U.S. senators, conservative governors, state legislators — everybody that has a voice and a platform — should speak up as a Republican, and tell Donald Trump to get out of this race because it’s not good for the party. But more importantly, it’s not good for this country.” (NPR)

Trump also attacked the judge in his Washington, DC case, Tanya Chutkan, saying

Chutkan had “admitted” she was engaging in “election interference” against him. In another post, the former president claimed that the federal judge “obviously” wanted him “behind bars” because she is “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR.”

What Trump did by attacking this judge was to alert and give permission to his base to go after this judge, just as he did with the attack on January 6th.

After that, Judge Chutkan got a death threat phone call from a woman in Texas.

How does this kind of behavior and incitement win Trump more of the general election voters he needs to win in 2024?

How does it get him even one more person to vote for him in the general election who did not vote for him in 2020?

It is not only not likely that he has earned himself more general election voters by attacking the judicial system, the people who will testify at his trials, or people who will sit as jurors? I believe Trump is proving that he is guilty by acting in this way and saying what he has been saying.

If there was any doubt whether he would obsessively and monomaniacally pursue a way to overturn an election that Joe Biden won, he is eliminating that doubt. Trump is literally proving up his own guilt by behaving like a raging dictator: Off with their heads!

Ask yourself–Is this a man who would order up a military coup if he could get away with it? I rest my case.

There are 4 judges who have the power to incarcerate Trump or issue a gag order pending trial. Will any of them rein Trump in? Or will they let him exert his First Amendment rights and shoot himself in the foot in the process?

AMERICAN GENERAL ELECTION VOTERS ARE LOSING INTEREST IN TRUMP

In a poll taken after the Georgia indictment was issued on Monday, August 14th, Trump remained strong with his base. He is polling even stronger with that base after the Georgia indictment. But he is but losing steam with the general electorate especially independents who make the difference in which candidate prevails in the presidential election. For Republican leaning voters who care about actually winning the election, it makes sense that they see Trump as unelectable. Because he is. He is the best GOP candidate for Biden to run against.

Half of Americans, but only 20 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. This poll, which surveyed American adults, was the only one of the four surveys conducted entirely after Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia.

When specifically asked by ABC about the Georgia case, 63 percent said the latest criminal charges against Mr. Trump were “serious.”

53% of Americans say they would “definitely not” support Trump in the 2024 election, according to a new AP-NORC poll .

And yet

• 43% say they would “definitely not” support President Biden.

Why it matters: Headlines about Trump’s polling dominance in the GOP primary mask his growing vulnerabilities in the general election, even against an unpopular opponent in Biden.

 

MEANWHILE…BIDEN IS DOING A GREAT JOB BUT NOT GETTING CREDIT FOR IT

History will reflect that Joe Biden was one of the best presidents our country ever had because he accomplished so much to elevate Americans after a devastating pandemic and a recession that gripped Europe but was avoided by the United States. Part of the reason for that success was that the federal government generously supported American families and small businesses to buffer the economy.

In fairness to Trump those funds started with his administration and the pandemic, but Biden has had to fight the Republicans to keep money flowing after Trump left office. And the student loan program envisioned by Biden has been abruptly halted by the conservative rightwing Supreme Court which damaged Biden’s standing with Next Gen voters. Nonetheless, Biden has been masterful at home with the economy and abroad diplomatically.

In Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters of an American July 25, 2023, documents Biden’s outstanding accomplishments:

President Biden’s determination to “build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up,” appears to be paying off. Last Friday the global financial services company Morgan Stanley credited Biden’s policies with driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure and manufacturing, a boom large enough that Morgan Stanley revised its gross domestic product growth projections upward to 1.9%, a projection almost four times higher than its original projection.

Analysts doubled their projections for the fourth quarter, and raised forecasts for next year, as well. “The economy in the first half of the year is growing much stronger than we had anticipated,” Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist Ellen Zentner wrote. 

Part of their reasoning comes from a surge in manufacturing construction across the country thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which invests in roads, bridges, and other “hard” infrastructure projects; the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests in addressing climate change; and the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests in science and semiconductor chip manufacturing. During the 2010s, manufacturing construction generally held at about $50–80 billion a year. Now it is at $189 billion, with private investment following the government investment. 

In half of the U.S. states, job creation is strong and unemployment is at or near 50-year lows, while lowering inflation rates has helped U.S. consumer confidence to rise to its highest level in two years (an important marker because consumer spending makes up about 70% of U.S. economic activity).

At the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan organization devoted to building a more dynamic U.S. economy, Daniel Newman reported yesterday that “[i]ndividuals filed nearly 2.7 million applications to start a business between January and June of this year, a 5 percent increase over 2022 and a staggering 52 percent increase over the same period in 2019.” He noted that “[t]he durability and growth of the startup surge is quite striking” and that nearly every major industry sector is participating in it.

Historically, Newman notes, “there is a tight correlation between the number of applications and true business formation.” “The sustained boost to entrepreneurship observed across much of the country since 2020 should produce a sense of optimism for a healthier, more dynamic economy in the coming years.”

Biden has always emphasized the importance of a healthy economy that gives workers breathing room and the ability to live with dignity. 

In addition to the positive economic news, the Republicans are not listening to the wishes of a majority of Americans. They have taken a stance on abortion that 70 % or more of Americans oppose. And gun control is another issue where the GOP is at odds with the majority. Not to mention what the Republicans are doing to destroy our democracy which is again at odds with what Americans want.

 

HERE IS THE SPLIT SCREEN THAT’S COMING

Trump will be showing up for his mug shot at a grimy Georgia prison this week; pretrial motions and more evidence about what Trump did and said that led to his indictments will be reported in the news; more Republicans might get their nerve up to speak out about Trump being an albatross for the Republican Party; but Trump’s cult members will continue to cling to him and his approvals will go up as the number of people who are still willing to call themselves Republican ebbs leaving only the most devoted cult members in what is left of the GOP, and of course there will be continued threats by Trump’s demented followers encouraged by Trump himself if the judges allow him to rage on.

In other words, Donald Trump is cementing his image as a vengeful criminal defendant/ future dictator fully capable of trying to orchestrate a coup plot to stay in power and his bevy of followers will continue to revere him as their martyr.

Then we have Joe Biden.

Joe Biden will be traveling across the country hyping the remarkable legislation that he got passed despite the unhelpful Republicans who didn’t vote for these bills but want to take credit for them; Biden will be talking about how Bidenomics helps Americans, hopefully the economy continues to improve (presidents have less power over this than many people think), and the Infrastructure bill will kick into higher gear with projects and small business growth across the country as inflation recedes.

Which guy do you want as your president?

If you are a MAGA everyone already knows the answer. You will never leave Trump. You are in a cult whether you know it or not. Richard Nixon still had the support of 31% of Americans as he slinked off in disgrace.

Days before he resigned, a Gallup poll found that only 31 percent of Republicans thought Nixon should no longer be president. (FiveThirtyEight)

Trump has a comparable number of Americans who will never leave him. Since Trump refuses to slink off in disgrace, he needs to be indicted for his criminal actions if we hope to banish Trump and resurrect our democracy.  Above all, We the People have to vote the MAGAs out over and over and over again to convince the GOP it must reinvent itself. They haven’t figured that out yet.