Do Trump’s political ambitions now go bigly up or bigly down?

Donald Trump during his inauguration in 2017. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has been indicted in New York. We don’t know the charges yet, but it is said to be related to a pay-off made to an adult movie actress, Stormy Daniels (legal name Stephanie Clifford) and the alleged misuse of campaign funds.

In 2018, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, who gave evidence that he acted as an intermediary in relation to the payment to Daniels, was sentenced to prison for three years for tax evasion and campaign finance violations.

Cohen has given evidence to the grand jury assembled in New York by District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

Trump had predicted his indictment and subsequent arrest would occur on Tuesday, March 21, but the deadline came and went. At a campaign speech at Waco Texas, last weekend, Trump declared his innocence and that he was the victim of “a witch hunt” that was “for something that it is not a crime, not a misdemeanour, not an affair.”

Earlier, on March 24, Trump took to his Truth Social account attacking Bragg. The headlines on the spate of social media posts led with the ominous predictions of “death and destruction” in the event of his arrest.

In the interests of fairness and context, Trump’s post read, “What kind of person can charge another person, in this case a former President of the United States, who got more votes than any sitting President in history, and leading candidate (by far!) for the Republican Party nomination, with a Crime, when it is known by all that NO Crime has been committed, & also known that potential death & destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our Country?”

It may well be the first of as many as four criminal indictments faced by the former President. There are other matters concerning undue influence on election results in Georgia, Trump’s role in inciting the January 6 riot in 2021 and the issue of his possession of secret and classified documents retained by Trump (the current POTUS, Joe Biden has conceded similar indiscretions).

The first event to contemplate is Trump’s “surrender” to authorities in New York. Early reports indicate this is being negotiated and must be handled with great care and caution. As with any one arrested in the State of New York, Trump will be fingerprinted, with a mugshot snapped and intriguingly, a cheek swab sample of DNA taken.

As has been widely reported, this indictment and any other will not prevent Donald Trump from running in the Republican primary to choose the GOP candidate for the 2024 Presidential election.

What criminal sanctions, if any, lie ahead for Donald J Trump is a matter of conjecture at this stage.

What we might care to turn our minds to is the question of Trump’s political fortunes while under indictment. Will this propel his chances of doing a Grover Cleveland and returning to White House albeit broken by a four-year period in the political wilderness or will it diminish them?

In normal times, a candidate for a primary to select a presidential candidate who is under indictment would be seen as a fairly serious impediment but these are not normal times and Donald Trump is no normal candidate.

Gazing into the crystal ball is always risky but we need look no longer than a period of a year when the Republican primaries get underway. The Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary take place in early February, 2024.

The first assumption we can happily make is that the indictment will not diminish Trump’s brand. Everyone knows who he is. And one way or another, minds are largely made up.

There may be a surge of support by way of a broader protest movement among those on the Right who regard Trump’s indictment as a form of political persecution. Similarly, there may be a wave against him from voters who have seen his presidency come and go and are not keen to watch the sequel.

There is also the Madonna factor. In the 1980s, the popstar was so ubiquitous with endless tours, a soft porn book, and endless celebrity papping that rendered her over-exposed and her subsequent recording ventures tanked for a good long time.

The only answer to over exposure is to go to ground for a while, hit the Malibu mansion and lie low for a year or three but that can’t and won’t happen to a man who is a walking headline.

All of these ponderances are largely problematic at this point of time. Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns.

In head-to-head polling between DeSantis and Trump, Trump is ahead of the Florida Governor at this early stage. A poll published this week from the Centre for American Political Studies at Harvard gave the former president a 26-point national lead over the Florida governor, by 50% to 24%, a four-point gain since February.

But over a similar period, a poll was released where Ron DeSantis leads Trump in polls in Iowa and is neck and neck in New Hampshire.

In that poll published by Public Opinion Strategies for an independent client e.g., not a SuperPAC or candidate, DeSantis leads Trump by eight points (45%-37%) in a head-to-head match-up in Iowa and ties with Trump (39%-39%) in New Hampshire.

And that is with Trump’s high recognition rate. Both he and Joe Biden enjoy virtual absolute recognition. Everyone knows who they are. But for the Florida Governor, recognition is a long way from total across the US. A recent poll concerning his approval or otherwise had a ‘don’t know’ factor in the twenty percentiles. Four months ago, it was closer to forty percent.

The troubling factor for Republicans is that since 2018, Trump has lost elections with big numbers of Democrats casting votes and big independent voter turnouts. That is where the problem lies. In the broad sweep of the US political environment, for every voter rusted onto the Trump bandwagon, there are as many as two (one Democrat, one independent) who feel similarly passionate about voting against him.

While we can dismiss a lot of the data as early polling in a political environment where polling is especially fraught, we can at least use these as baselines to determine the consequences of Trump’s indictment as we approach the primary approach now less than a year away.

On the almost endless roll of Trump campaigns, the word bigly is back, one of the Donald’s favourite superlatives. Just how bigly his chances go up or down after his indictment is a question without an answer just yet.