The District Attorney’s office in New York is expected to issue an inditement on former President Donald Trump for $130,000 (Sh17 million) “hush money” paid to porn star Stormy Daniel to keep her quiet about his marital transgressions in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
This latest legal conundrum for Donald Trump comes in the backdrop of legal cases the former president faces in Georgia for interfering in the presidential election in that state, a tax evasion case in New York State relating to falsifying tax documents on his real estate and a case involving his repeated refusal to hand over classified documents held at his Mar-a-Lago resort home in Florida.
While on the surface these legal challenges appear a major detriment to Trump’s political future, they only raise his popularity in the base of the Republican party.
Marital philandering has not truncated the political futures of many US presidents. This is true from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton and now Donald Trump.
For the case of Donald Trump, he will be legally playing to undermine the case against him by Alvin Bragg, the District Attorney in New York. More importantly, he will be playing to the base of the Republican Party, where he still commands a large amount of support.
Why is this Republican base support important to Trump? Because these supporters are the most motivated in the party and will come out in the largest numbers during the Republican primaries to select the nominee for the presidential elections in 2024.
In addition to this, one-third of the senators are up for reelection and the 215 Republican members of the House of Representatives will be keen not to sideline Trump so as to avoid primary challenges from core Trump Republican base supporters in the 2024 primaries.
So, Trump’s legal cases not only have political implications for the New Yorker looking to make America Great Again – Again, but they will also have major reverberations to senators, members of the house and even candidates running for statewide office in state legislatures.
The irony of the inditement Trump will probably face from the New York District Attorney’s office is that it will boost his support from the base of his party, but hurt him in the 2024 general election.
It will have the effect of Trump defeating his political rivals like Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, while consolidating his support among the Republican base for the right to be the sole nominee of the party for president.
Trump will use any legal cases against him to frame himself as a martyr for several Republican causes. Among these are white grievance, culture wars around teaching Critical Race Theory and Black Studies in schools, anti-LGBTQI issues, and an overregulating, corrupt and repressive federal government eviscerating the 10th Amendment rights of the states and the people more broadly.
Lastly, while these cases raise Trump’s popularity among his base, and can conceivably propel him to the Republican nomination for president, his election denialism, unhinged political antics, and cases at state and national levels, will alienate moderate voters and independents in the general election.
These constituencies are frustrated by Trump’s endless political shenanigans, erratic decision making and legal conundrums. While the cases against Trump help him in the short term, the 2024 elections could prove to be quite a different ball game.
