Former United States President Donald Trump is leading the Republican field for the party's presidential nomination. Photo / AP
Former United States President Donald Trump is leading the Republican field for the party's presidential nomination. Photo / AP
EDITORIAL
The online weirdness surrounding the circling legal entanglements of Donald J Trump obscures the extent of the real-life stakes.
Social media has featured AI-produced fake images of the former United States president being “arrested” and “imprisoned” in anticipation of Trump being indicted.
Trump is himself trying tostir up outrage among his supporters over his legal threats, which include a porn star hush-money case in New York and an FBI probe into classified top secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump is under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney's office over a payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential race. Photo / AP, File
Indicting a former or sitting US president would be unprecedented and historic. Trump has plenty of legal attention on him.
But using the state law hush-money case, which allegedly occurred during the 2016 presidential campaign and has been in the public arena for four years, seems like small ammunition to use in a legal battle with likely heavy political consequences. A Justice Department case over the Capitol insurrection would carry much more weight.
Any indictment would not purely be legal and would instead land like a grenade in America’s charged political climate.
There’s a good chance anyway that the upcoming 2024 US presidential election could be crazier than the last one with more political disinformation and extremism.
A taste of that came with the reaction to AI-generated pics of Trump, which started as a joke but spread to millions. An art generator, used recently to humorous effect on Twitter, shows how easily deep fakes could be misused to influence people.
Trump’s personal fate is tied up with what this means for the next election.
From level-pegging with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis last year, Trump has cleared out in opinion polls on the Republican primary to now be the undisputed frontrunner for the party’s nomination.
For this to be the case, with Trump being a known entity, suggests that he has the best path to the nomination, barring legal calamity. Enough Republicans know who he is and what he’s done and still want him.
For instance, a Monmouth University poll this week shows Trump has gained 15 points since December to be the favourite with 41 per cent support. DeSantis, at 27 per cent this month, has lost 12 points over the same period.
Republican politicians with eyes on the nomination are in the same bind as in 2016 when they struggled to deal with his king of the jungle taunts and attacks. Just taking Trump’s trash talk on the chin so as not to upset his supporters doesn’t appear to work.
Donald Trump with Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey at a Fort Myers campaign rally in 2018. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times, File
Few people are as effective at bully branding as Trump - defining a lesser-known opponent negatively before the rival can introduce themselves positively.
While different in style, there isn’t a great gap on substance between the two, with both populists milking the US culture wars to their advantage.
DeSantis is also stumbling as he edges towards formally declaring himself a candidate.
For instance, in just a week he has gone from calling Russia’s war in Ukraine a “territorial dispute” and characterising US support for Kyiv as a “blank cheque”, to describing President Vladimir Putin as a “war criminal” who should be “held accountable”.
DeSantis, or “DeSanctimonious” as Trump calls him, may hope that Trump becomes legally wounded, so the governor can swoop in to clean up.
DeSantis has tried to contrast his approach to the erratic, off-the-wall show of Trump’s White House. He said in an interview: “So, the way we run the government, I think, is no daily drama, focus on the big picture and put points on the board.”
But with Trumpism continuing to dominate the party, it’s easy for Trump officials to label implied criticism as gripes from an inauthentic establishment figure.
It’s hard to see how the process won’t slide into a mud wrestle once debates begin.
Should Trump lose because of his liabilities, he would at the least snipe from the sidelines in the general election. It would be a personal win for him to drag down the person who trumped him.
