Donald Trump’s fourth criminal indictment has raised new questions around the political landscape in the United States, but analysts say it is unlikely to have an immediate effect on the former president’s push for the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination, reports Al Jazeera.
The indictment in Georgia – which ensnares Trump and 18 associates in connection with efforts to meddle with the 2020 vote results in the state – fits into the ex-president’s oft-repeated claims that he is being systematically targeted by partisan political elites.
That has been a view largely embraced by his supporters, making it unlikely that the Georgia charges – much like those that preceded them – will hurt Trump’s support in the polls, said Geoffrey Kabaservice, vice president of the Niskanen Center think tank.
“The reality is that these indictments only solidify his hold over the Republican base,” Kabaservice told Al Jazeera.
“Well before his presidency was up, his followers decided that he was their champion,” he said. “Trump, even before he ran, said that he could go down to Fifth Avenue [in New York City] and shoot somebody and people would still support him, and I think that has proven out.”
Trump – who has denied any wrongdoing in all the cases against him – is the clear frontrunner in the Republican nomination race, leading his closest challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by 38 percentage points, according to an average of recent US polling data maintained by the FiveThirtyEight website.
The poll aggregator found that Trump’s support among Republicans rose sharply in the wake of his first indictment in New York earlier this year on charges related to a hush-money payment made to an adult film star.
Republican support trended downward somewhat following his second indictment in June in a federal case related to his handling of classified documents, and it levelled off in the wake of his third indictment on federal charges related to efforts to subvert the 2020 election, the website said.
But despite the indictments failing to dampen Trump’s early lead, several political observers told Al Jazeera that the unprecedented criminal cases against the former president could represent a liability for him in the general election in November 2024.
That contest will see Trump most likely face off against Democratic President Joe Biden in a rematch of the 2020 vote that Biden won. Just how much of a liability remains to be seen, with several recent polls showing a tight race between the pair.
At the same time, the latest case against Trump is likely to continue to siphon time and resources from him ahead of the busy US election season, said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a think tank and advocacy group in Washington, DC.
“As long as he’s paying for his legal fees from his campaign expenses, it means that he has yet another drain on those campaign expenses,” Olsen told Al Jazeera. “[That] makes it difficult for him to mount the sort of campaign you need in order to win a nomination or win a general election.”
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
