I’m reading “How Trump Benefits From an Indictment Effect/In polling, fund-raising and conservative media, the former president has turned criminal charges into political assets” (NYT).
Before the first indictment, we’re told, Fox News “had been weaning itself off Mr. Trump and elevating Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.”Fox programming centered on themes and villains that Mr. DeSantis had built his brand on fighting: transgender athletes, Dr. Anthony Fauci and all things “woke.”
But after Mr. Trump’s first indictment… [p]rogramming across conservative media centered on the idea that Mr. Trump was the victim of a justice system hijacked by Democrats. Mr. DeSantis’s fight against “wokeness” became passé — a matter of small stakes when set against Mr. Trump’s potential incarceration….
That first indictment poured rocket fuel into Mr. Trump’s online fund-raising machine….
For many of Mr. Trump’s supporters, the details of each successive indictment have blended together into a generic attack on the former president, creating something of a background noise they are largely tuning out….
For some Republicans, the mere fact that Democrats were investigating and charging Mr. Trump with crimes was added reason to support him. And the fact that Mr. Trump’s rivals have not been indicted was a cause of suspicion.Good. I’m glad this is backfiring. I have never been a Trump supporter, but I hate the criminalization of politics.
The Justice Department blew its reputation over the preceding several years, so that a large part of the populace — which even a decade ago, or maybe two, would have viewed these indictments as evidence of serious misbehavior — now just assumes it’s political because everything is.
THE FIX IS IN: J6 Committee Accused of DESTROYING Key Intelligence Documents About Capitol Riot.
Matt Gaetz Suggests He May Be Trump’s AG, Warns Biden He ‘Will Be There to Actually Enforce the Law’
h/t Glenn
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