I n a post this week regarding former president Trump’s being cited for contempt by Judge Juan Merchan, I argued that the gag order Trump violated multiple times is unwarranted because there are reasons of law and self-interest that should induce the de facto 2024 Republican presidential nominee to rein it in. In making that point, I stressed: “Trump’s diatribes remind the majority of voters in the country who oppose him why they oppose him.”
I said “the majority of voters” oppose Trump because it is true. It’s not credibly contestable. It has been true for almost a decade that a majority of voters oppose him, as he heads into what, for now, looks like a very tight election.
I still have my doubts about whether it will stay tight.
If you’re reading National Review, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and other right-of-center publications, and if you’re watching Fox News, you are getting a duly skeptical assessment of the Democrats’ lawfare campaign against Trump — you might even sense that it could end up being a net plus for the former president. Personally, I wish the public were more offended by the politicization of law-enforcement — a subject far more important to me than Donald Trump’s political prospects.
Anyway, disenthrall yourselves. The lawfare is far from a drag on the reelection campaign of President Biden, who has done so much to promote it (because he doesn’t have much else to run on). That’s not to say lawfare is wildly popular. It is apparent from polling, though, that more than half of Americans think Trump has committed crimes, should be convicted, and should not be a viable presidential candidate. That’s about the same percentage of the public that has consistently disapproved of Trump since he formally entered politics. A majority of Americans see the lawfare as politically motivated, and many of those are disturbed about that. Yet, as long as most people believe he should be convicted (and about half think he will be), they are simply not going to get too whipped up about the objectionable aspects of these prosecutions. Whatever shot Trump has of being elected is due to Biden’s job performance, not a groundswell of lawfare resentment.
Even if Trump’s nomination was inevitable — which it may have been given the state of the Republican Party — it was still daft of the party to make him the standard-bearer. A solid GOP candidate, without the circus that surrounds Trump and the baggage that weighs him down, would be so comfortably ahead by this point that either the race would be all but over or Democrats would have figured out a way to sideline Biden — or both.
I’ve often said that I don’t think Trump can win in November. Am I shakier in that conviction now? Of course I am, as I’ve fessed up on our podcast when Rich Lowry presses me on it. Biden is doing everything he can to make my high-confidence prediction look foolish.
I can’t support Trump. I think he should have been impeached, removed, and disqualified from the presidency. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution is a disgrace, but it happens to have coincided with oral argument in the Supreme Court over Trump’s immunity claim in the 2020 election-interference case. Given the justices’ seizing on the distinction between official acts of the presidency and private conduct that is not conceivably a proper basis for an immunity claim, I’ve been going line by line through the indictment — as I anticipate the Court may direct Judge Tanya Chutkan to do on remand — to sort out how much of Smith’s case would be left if all the potentially immune official acts were eliminated. I’ll have more about that exercise on another occasion. Suffice it to say that Smith will still have a case. And assuming it remains his unseemly, politicized goal to get to trial before Election Day, he might just agree to go with that pared-down set of allegations. After all, if he gets to trial there’s a good chance that Trump will be convicted by a Washington, D.C., jury.
But my point, for present purposes, is that one cannot read the details in that indictment and not be appalled by the course of conduct. I don’t like Smith’s prosecution because I think the charges are a poor fit (although, after listening to the oral argument, I believe the Supreme Court would be more sympathetic to the conspiracy-to-defraud-the-United States charge than I’ve previously suspected it would be). But no matter what you think of the charges, the evidence — Trump’s conduct — is disqualifying. I could never again recommend that people swallow hard and vote for Trump because it’s a binary choice — as I did in 2020. The choice in 2024 is excruciating. I’d say, “Vote your conscience,” but I’m having trouble with my own conscience, so that would be pretty vapid advice.
That said, I affirmatively oppose Biden — it’s not just that I can’t support him, but that I deeply, implacably oppose him. I think a Trump presidency would be bad in many ways, but it would be markedly better than what we have now — I say that with confidence, too, because, unlike the hysterical “our democracy is hanging by a thread” crowd, I don’t see the Constitution as a brittle thing. The combination of our fundamental law, Trump’s energetic political opposition, the independent judiciary, and the fact that Trump would be a lame duck from Day One would easily overcome the worst-case scenarios that Democrats and anti-Trumpers conjure up daily.
By contrast, Biden has eviscerated the southern border, ignited inflation, doubled down on the recklessness of the prior three administrations regarding our ruinous debt, made the world far more dangerous through his transnational-progressive philosophy and incompetence, been the willing instrument of sharia supremacists and cultural Marxists, and governed as a counter-constitutional autocrat with regard for neither the limits on executive power nor his oath to execute the laws faithfully.
I don’t want a Trump presidency. It’s a historic — even if inevitable — blown opportunity by Republicans not to have nominated a reliable conservative who might have ushered in eight-to-16 years of restorative administrations. But a second Biden government, which would likely become a Harris government, would be a disaster.
And yes, I hear you sniping, “So Andy, the Constitution can rein in Trump but not Democrats?” The sad reality is that while Congress, the administrative state, the lower federal courts, and the media-Democrat complex are very effective checks on the excesses (and often on lawful policy) of Republican presidents, this sprawl is much more indulgent of — indeed, often downright encouraging of — lawlessness and mayhem catalyzed by Democratic presidents. Trump wasn’t able to reallocate a few billion for border security, which is broadly popular; Biden, by contrast, continues to be cheered on by the progressive establishment on such broadly unpopular policies as the cancellation of hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans and the red carpet rolled out for millions of illegal aliens — with a slew of Palestinian “refugees” now on deck.
Even as he delusionally brags about how well his campaign is going, about how he is cruising to a runaway victory over Biden, Trump’s ceiling continues to be under 50 percent in major polls. He’s basically at around 46–47 . . . his ceiling even in the best of times. As always, he is underwater on favorability ratings — he’s at minus-ten now, and while the favorable-impression number rarely gets as high as 43, the unfavorable-impression number is often over 54 and occasionally scratches 57. We don’t know how much Trump’s numbers will dip if he is convicted of a felony between now and November. (If it’s in Bragg’s farcical case, I reckon the dip will be negligible.) More significantly, the Dems haven’t yet unleashed the torrents of negative messaging that are coming.
A little over a week ago, in a closed primary (i.e., only Republicans voting), Nikki Haley got the votes of 150,000 Pennsylvanians, good enough for 16 percent of the total. A number of commentators dismissed this, noting that incumbent presidents and other prohibitive favorites always draw some opposition as primary season grinds on. For Team Trump, I think that’s whistling past the graveyard.
Haley has been out of the race for nearly two months. Moreover, she was an okay but not great candidate when she was in the race, and she is not particularly popular. This was not a Haley vote. It was an illustration of the deep-seated anti-Trump coalition within the Republican Party. Haley was just the vehicle for registering dissent because her name still happened to be on the ballot. The 16 percent were not voting for her, they were voting against Trump. They could have just stayed home or otherwise ignored Trump’s inevitable primary victory; instead, they were sufficiently motivated by their disdain to go out of their way to cast a vote for anyone who wasn’t Trump.
These are not Republicans who, in the end, are apt to “come home.” Maybe Trump can still appeal to them by picking a vice president who is popular in Reagan-Republican circles — say, a Tom Cotton or a Mike Pompeo. Trump doesn’t need a populist because he’s got that part of the new, smaller, Trumpy GOP sewn up. Rather, he needs to do what he so rarely does: broaden his support by appealing to people who don’t like him personally, even if they want Biden and Democrats turned out of office.
In the 2024 race, the Republican vice-presidential nominee will be unusually significant for three reasons: (a) because Trump would be a one-term president, the veep choice will be the GOP’s 2028 heir(ess) apparent; (b) because Trump is going to be stuck in courtrooms for much of the time between now and November, the veep choice will be thrust into an unusually prominent campaign role; and (c) because, next to Biden, Kamala Harris is the best thing Republicans have going for them, the contrast with a strong veep choice would be a daily reminder to voters of what a trainwreck Harris is — which matters because she is very likely to become president if the senescent, deteriorating, soon-to-be-82-year-old Biden wins.
Yet, Trump could surely screw up this opportunity, rare in the modern era, to pick a veep who could make a meaningful positive impact. There is a very good chance Democrats will win the House in November. If so, they will surely impeach Trump the minute he, in his first official act at about 12:15 p.m. on January 20, 2025, fires Jack Smith and directs that any remaining federal indictments against him be dismissed. Trump may harbor real concerns that if he picks a veep who is too popular with the GOP establishment, Senate Republicans may not be tripping over themselves to acquit him in an impeachment trial. Trump may decide he prefers a lesser light (or even a MAGA-lite) in the number-two slot. If he does, that is not going to help him reel in at least some of the close to one-in-five Republicans who are dead set against him — the voters he needs to have any chance of winning.
Put it all together and I still think Trump’s a 2024 also-ran. I don’t think he is going to stay at the 46–47 range — at which he miraculously won in 2016 and then predictably lost in 2020. There’s too much headwind: the lawfare gambit — if there are felony convictions – and the Democrats’ coming waves of campaign ads about the Capitol riot, the stop-the-steal scheme, the gratuitously self-destructive Mar-a-Lago document retention and grand-jury obstruction, the unhinged Truth Social posts, the Covid lockdowns and mismanagement, the numerous former Trump officials on record saying he is unfit for office, etc. That will very likely knock Trump down under 45 — probably lower than that.
No one knows how multiple third-party and independent candidates, especially RFK Jr., will skew the Trump–Biden rematch. And I’ll concede the point: Biden is sufficiently awful — perhaps historically awful — that Trump could eke out a win. But even with a home-run veep pick, and continued good fortune in delaying the federal criminal trials in Washington and Florida, this will be an uphill battle for him.
MAGA Republicans who already see their man back in the Oval Office next year have simply never come to grips with a stubborn fact: Their affection for Donald Trump is a decidedly minority position in these United States. There is only so much Joe Biden’s unpopularity can do about that.