Trump on the Trail and on Trial

[robosmith]

Trump on the Trail and on Trial

Quote

Trump’s trials, in which he faces ninety-one felony counts, have often been described as a potential distraction for the candidate. But Trump, who complained in Atkinson that he has been indicted more times than Al Capone, did not sound distracted or gloomy about the prospect of spending that time in court. Quite the opposite.

Is it clever, or deluded, for Trump to see his trials as a political opportunity? He has already been found liable for sexual abuse, in the Carroll case, and he still faces charges of financial fraud, taking documents marked classified from the White House and refusing to give them back, and conspiring to overturn a federal election—not exactly a winning roster. On the icy campaign trail this month, Trump’s presence has been something short of overwhelming. His events are held mostly in hotel ballrooms and country clubs, rather than the arenas of yore; he says little that is new; the crowds tend to thin noticeably as he rambles on. They chuckle when he says crooked Joe Biden, but there is nothing like the cascading chants of Lock her up! directed at Hillary Clinton in 2016. Even Trump’s Iowa landslide consisted of just fifty-six thousand votes, and half of Republicans wanted someone else. Lately, Trump has been working into his stump speech an attack on Fani Willis, the Fulton County D.A., who indicted him for conspiring to pressure Georgia officials to invalidate his loss in the state in 2020—and whom one of his co-defendants has accused of an alleged conflict of interest. For Trump, the attraction of the trials, in an election characterized so far by general indifference, may be quite basic. They give him something to talk about. 

It may be clever for the MAGA CULT in the primary and deluded in the general election which has SANE voters.