From the Beastie Boys and Ice Cube in the 1980s and ‘90s, to Diddy (nee Puff Daddy) and Ye (nee Kanye) in the 2000s and 2010s, Trump has been name-dropped 300-odd times over hip-hop’s 30-year back catalogue.

But none of those will match the sales records being set by the 34 bangers dropped this week by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

“It is like arresting Tupac,” said comedy icon Chris Rock on the eve of the remarkable moment in history. “He’s just going to sell more records. Are you stupid?”

The unprecedented indictment, arrest and court appearance of a former president on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree isn’t just breaking records, it’s up-ending the 2024 presidential election and all but guaranteeing Trump will win the Republican Party nomination for another shot at the White House.

Trump raised a record $USD10 million in the six days after the indictment was announced. Notably, more than 25 per cent were said to be from first-time and small-money donors with an average contribution of $USD34.

Those numbers were posted before the former president appeared in court. While he didn’t have an official police photo taken, T-shirts emblazoned with a mock mugshot, captioned with “NOT GUILTY” and the faux prisoner number of 45-47 04 04 2023 – representing the so-called 45th and 47th president, plus the date of his arrest – quickly went viral. The $US47 price tag put it firmly in that grassroots Goldilocks zone of small-money donors.

“If I were a Democrat, I might well report Alvin Bragg to the Federal Election Commission for making the single greatest in-kind contribution to a presidential campaign in history,” Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who narrowly lost to Trump for the Republican party’s nomination in 2016, said.

“I think this is an enormous political gift to Donald Trump,” he said.

That gift keeps on giving. Poll after poll shows Republicans rallying around Trump. Trafalgar Group, named the “most accurate pollster” of the upset 2016 cycle of Hillary Clinton’s loss, shows Trump was supported by only 43.8 per cent of likely Republican primary voters before the indictment.

After he predicted the legal threat on social media, his support jumped to 44.4 per cent. After it was officially announced, his support reached 56.2 per cent.

At the same time, support for Trump’s most-likely challenger, Ron DeSantis, went the opposite direction from 32.2 per cent to 30.4 per cent to 22.5 per cent.

“Trump went up by 12 to 14 to 33 points on DeSantis. We think that’s a legitimate jump,” Trafalgar’s chief pollster, Robert C Cahaly, told News Corp Australia

“It’s kind of the inverse of what the American left wanted. When the media are covering

Trump like the OJ Simpson chase; publicity to Trump is like oxygen to fire.

“The more Trump is in the headlines the stronger he ends up doing. The more media ignores him, the weaker he does. They’re giving him strength that they otherwise didn’t intend to.”

DeSantis has not officially announced his candidacy. But if, as expected, the two Republican heavyweights are on a collision course to the party’s primary caucuses that begin in January, they will fight it out against the at precisely the same time Trump’s trial would be going to trial.

Prosecutors are expected to provide discovery materials to defence lawyers about a week after Trump’s formal arrest. This will include witness statements and grand jury minutes. More evidence, including subpoena responses and police documents, is due by mid-June.

The defence has until August 8 to file its motions, expected to include requests to dismiss the case, change the venue, and have the judge recuse himself. Prosecutors will file their responses by September 19 before the next in-person court date scheduled on December 4, where the judge will issue his rulings on the motions.

Trump’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who lead the successful defence of the first impeachment, said there’s little chance Judge Juan Merchan would dismiss the case and that the charges would “probably” result in a conviction of the former president.

“I don’t think that if you had the best lawyers in the history of the world — Abraham Lincoln and John Marshall — a New York City judge would dismiss this case because that New York City judge’s life would be over,” he said.

Dershowitz said the conviction, however, would be reversed on an appeal likely falling in the middle of the 2024 presidential election cycle.

“It will never be affirmed all the way up to the Supreme Court,” he added. “But Bragg is going to be popular, and he’ll probably win this case — unless there is a change of venue.”

On the unlikely chance that Trump is sentenced to prison if convicted, winning the 2024 election would be his get-out-of-jail-free card.

The constitution does not prevent any US citizen from running for federal office regardless of whether they’re facing charges or convicted and serving a prison sentence. He could be sworn in a Rikers Island before issuing himself a presidential pardon.

While the arrest of a former president is unprecedented, running for president from prison is not. In 1920, the Socialist Party’s presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, won one million votes while serving a 10-year sentence for opposing America’s entry into World War I.

To get that far, Bragg will have to prove Trump’s New York state of mind, or his criminal intent, to commit election fraud in alleged pay-offs to porn star Stormy Daniels, former Playboy model Karen MacDougal, and Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin.

Chris Rock has a prediction for that, too. He already nailed Trump’s chart-topping response in the vein of Tupac Shakur, who sold over 3 million copies of “Me Against The World” after he was released from prison in 1995.

Trump’s “hush money” payments, Rock suggested, were less criminal mastermind and more old-fashioned gentleman.

“He slept with a porn star and paid off someone so his wife wouldn’t find out. That’s romantic,” Rock said. “We’ve all been cheated on. Don’t you wish that the person that cheated on you paid off somebody so you wouldn’t find out?”

If the jury feels the same, Trump’s presidential campaign, like Tupac, isn’t dead yet.