Trump’s legal troubles are a boon to his campaign

The Trump 2024 campaign’s fundraising email operations went into overdrive last weekend. “Dems threaten to seize Trump Tower,” screamed one call to donate on Saturday. “Maniacs want to seize Trump Tower,” read another. “If they seize Trump Tower…” said a third. “Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower,” added yet another. 

The tone flitted from alarm to defiance. By Sunday, the message was: “Trump Tower will never be captured” and “You’ll never get Trump Tower.” And on Monday, after Trump was ordered to pay a mere $175 million bond in his civil fraud suit instead of the initial half-billion, the campaign turned triumphant. “Trump Tower remains mine” read an email from “Donald Trump — Emergency.” “We keep Trump Tower,” announced another. Yet still they wanted money.  

Each time the polls seem to be tightening, ‘Trump’s legal troubles’ come roaring back to his political rescue

Those emails — and the no doubt massive sums in campaign donations generated from them — tell you a lot about who the real winner of the “Trump’s legal troubles” story is. It’s Donald Trump. 

Everyone can see that it’s a perverse situation. His various prosecutors — Letitia James and Alvin Bragg in New York, Fani Willis in Georgia — are ambitious political animals who raise their profiles by taking on the 45th president. That’s why they taunt him on social media as the trials go on. No doubt they are causing him considerable headaches and financial pain too.  

But in political terms, the lawfare is an almighty boon for his campaign and Trump and his advisors know it. Americans can see how corrupt the legal assault against him is and voters don’t like it. Ever since Trump had his now infamous mug shot taken in a Fulton Country jail house last year, his poll numbers have risen. 

Each time the polls seem to be tightening — Biden narrowly pulled ahead again in national polling last week — “Trump’s legal troubles” come roaring back to his political rescue again. This generates sympathy for him and validates his core electoral message that the Deep State is trying to destroy him. 

The bigger Trump legal story yesterday was not the reduced bond but the news that a New York judge has set the date of April 15 for the beginning of his first criminal trial over the “hush money” payments relating to Trump’s alleged adultery. 

Nobody quite knows how the public will react to seeing a president in the dock. On the one hand, the case, brought by Alvin Bragg, is an obviously partisan prosecution. Bragg has cobbled together some possible tax misdemeanors and tried to turn them into a series of felonies. 

But the trial will shed light on Trump’s seedy past — again — and remind Americans that the man who is busily comparing his legal persecution to that of Jesus Christ this Easter is still the man who cavorted with porn stars and led a playboy lifestyle. And that’s how, in the morally topsy-turvy world of twenty-first century American politics, the lawfare on Trump might end up hurting him — not when he gets prosecuted, but when he gets away it. 

Until then, however, the trials of Donald Trump appear to be sending him to the White House not the jail house. And America’s justice system has become a farce on the world stage.  

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.