 Campaign Report |
Campaign Report |
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How a possible Trump arrest is roiling 2024 |
Former President Donald Trump's possible indictment in New York is shaking up the nascent Republican presidential primary, forcing declared and prospective candidates to thread the needle when it comes to defending him. |
For now, the 2024 hopefuls who have spoken up on the potential criminal charges have offered their own versions of the same argument – that the case against Trump in New York is a political hit job carried out by a Democratic district attorney. They've largely avoided discussing the nature of the investigation, which centers on alleged hush money payments made to a porn star on Trump's behalf during his 2016 presidential campaign. Yet the potential indictment has simultaneously emerged as something of a litmus test in the race. Over the weekend, Trump's allies put pressure on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to rush to the former president's defense, while another GOP candidate, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, publicly called on DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to condemn what he called Trump's "political persecution by prosecution." DeSantis finally weighed in on Monday, slamming Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a "Soros-backed prosecutor" who had "weaponized" his office to score political points. Yet he also said that he has no interest in involving himself in the matter and signaled that he would not intervene in any extradition proceedings. He also went to pains to remind his audience about the allegations against Trump. "Look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair," he said, drawing a laugh from the crowd. "I just, I can't speak to that." Haley also addressed the potential indictment on Monday, telling Fox News that "when you get into political prosecutions like this, it's more about revenge than it is about justice." Trump and his allies, meanwhile, have made clear that they're not happy with DeSantis's response. Donald Trump Jr., the former president's eldest son, called the Florida governor's remarks a sign of "pure weakness," while Trump himself went after DeSantis twice on his social media website, Truth Social, saying in one post that "Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS & FAKE STORIES sometime in the future, as he gets older, wiser, and better known." It's worth remembering that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office hasn't formally announced charges against Trump, and the only reason that the issue resurfaced in recent days is because Trump claimed that he would be arrested on Tuesday – something that has yet to actually happen. But several Republicans said that this puts Trump exactly where he wants to be politically: victimized and at the center of the news cycle. |
Welcome to The Hill's Campaign Report, we're Max Greenwood and Caroline Vakil. Each week we track the key stories you need to know to stay ahead of the 2024 election and who will set the agenda in Washington. |
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Key election stories and other recent campaign coverage: |
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) received just 26 percent support in the latest GOP presidential poll from Morning Consult — the lowest number he’s hit in the survey since December. DeSantis, who has not entered the GOP primary but is expected to do so, trailed former President Trump, who won 54 percent, by 28 percentage points in the new poll published on Tuesday. Former Vice President Mike Pence came in third with … |
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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Monday accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) of pursuing “revenge” in his investigation against former President Trump over payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign. Trump, who is running for another term in the White House, said over the weekend that he expects he’ll be arrested Tuesday in connection with the hush-money … |
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| Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) are placing their bets, making a wager on the winner of the 2024 White House race. The South Carolina Republican appeared as a guest on "The Daily Show" on Monday. Franken, serving as guest host on the Comedy Central program, welcomed his former Senate colleague, saying he was hopeful they would "find common ground." "There's always hope," Graham quipped. Describing … |
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Upcoming news themes and events we're watching: |
- 14 days until Wisconsin's Supreme Court elections and Chicago's mayoral runoffs
- 207 days until Louisiana's gubernatorial primary
- 231 days until Kentucky's and Mississippi's gubernatorial generals
- 595 days until the 2024 general election
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Pressure builds on DeSantis |
DeSantis is still likely months away from announcing a 2024 presidential campaign, but he's already feeling the heat. The Florida governor has spent weeks now under attack by Trump and his team. He's faced criticism from not only his would-be primary rivals, but from rank-and-file Republicans across the country for dubbing Russia's invasion of Ukraine a "territorial dispute." There are concerns that the state legislative session that he hopes to use to bolster his get-things-done image could also end in some political liabilities, at least as it pertains to a general election campaign. And while he still appears to be the most serious Republican threat to Trump's 2024 ambitions, there are signs that his support may be stagnating. Here's what The New York Times' Nate Cohn had to say late last week about DeSantis's sliding poll numbers: "Over the last two months, we've gotten about a dozen polls from pollsters who had surveyed the Republican race over the previous two months. These polls aren't necessarily of high quality or representative, so don't focus on the average across these polls. It's the trend that's important, and the trend is unequivocal: Every single one of these polls has shown Mr. DeSantis faring worse than before, and Mr. Trump faring better." To be sure, it's incredibly difficult to get a clear read on where the Republican presidential contest stands this far out. DeSantis hasn't actually announced a campaign; Trump is still under threat from a potential indictment; more candidates are expected to jump into the race in the coming months; and those who already have, like Haley, have struggled to markedly improve their standing in the polls. Still, there's a sense among some political observers that DeSantis's standing in the budding primary contest isn't as ironclad as it appeared to be just a few weeks ago. Peter Schorsch, the publisher of the news website Florida Politics, put it like this in a Monday tweet: "Bottom line: @RonDeSantisFL is, after three weeks of not-campaigning-but-campaigning, probably somewhat better known but arguably, in worse position with the GOP base and in same or worse position with non-Florida moderates." |
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Branch out with a different read from The Hill: |
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Prosecutors in Georgia who are probing the efforts of then-President Trump to overturn the state's 2020 election results are asking to speak with a lawyer of his in their investigation. Christina Bobb, an attorney for Trump, has been asked to speak to prosecutors in the case, Bobb's defense attorney confirmed to ABC News on Monday. John Lauro, the defense attorney, told ABC that prosecutors did not specify what information … |
A gun safety advocacy group launched a $500,000 ad campaign on Monday targeting former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly over abortion and gun safety in the state Supreme Court race. "You already know Dan Kelly worked for a radical anti-abortion group, and on the court, could uphold Wisconsin's 1849 abortion ban — with no exceptions for rape or incest," a narrator says in the 30-second TV ad called "Know," paid for … |
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Local and state headlines regarding campaigns and elections: |
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Election news we've flagged from other outlets: |
- Stop overthinking it: An indictment would be bad for Trump (Politico)
- DeSantis privately called for Google to be "broken up" (ProPublica)
- Iowa's sharp right turn: From centrist state to "Florida of the North" (The Washington Post)
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Key stories on The Hill right now: |
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly cast the Ukraine war as an epic fight for Russia's survival, accusing the West of "using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and as a testing range." In his telling, the West started the war, and Russia has everything to lose — even when all available evidence points to Putin launching … Read more |
| A lawyer for former President Trump said on Monday that it will be "an all-out war" if Trump is indicted in the Manhattan district attorney's probe into a 2016 hush-money payment. "They can do what they want," Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said of the possible indictment in an interview with former Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle on Monday. … Read more |
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Opinions related to campaigns and elections submitted to The Hill: |
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