By Maggie Severns (Mark Weaver quoted)
Shortly after launching his presidential campaign, Ron DeSantis told a Tennessee talk show host that 2024 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump “is a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016.”
“I don’t know what happened,” the Florida governor added.
Yet as DeSantis and the former president spar on the campaign trail for the Republican nomination, DeSantis has stuck closely to Trump when it comes to the swirling cloud of unprecedented state and federal criminal investigations hanging over him.
Recently, DeSantis went a step further during a podcast interview in saying he would be “aggressive [in] issuing pardons” to those involved in the January 6th riots. Trump had said as much himself two weeks earlier.
DeSantis’ decision to stand by Trump – even mimicking his statements about the Manhattan district attorney being “Soros-backed” – reflects a belief shared by many Republican strategists that there's not much to gain on the campaign trail by criticizing the former president over his legal problems. Yet some rival candidates are staking out a different approach as they try to distinguish themselves and their message from the growing field.
(Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images) Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images
Rival Asa Hutchinson pledged last week there will be “no blanket pardons” for people involved in the January 6th riots if he were elected president. This week, two more candidates who have been intertwined with the Trump presidency plan to enter the race: Chris Christie, an early supporter and finalist for the vice presidency in 2016who has been critical of Trump since the 2020 election, and former Vice President Mike Pence – who testified before a grand jury as a witness in Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Trump probe. Liz Cheney, the ex-congresswoman who drew headlines for her leadership on the January 6th committee, recently ran an adattacking Trump in the early primary state of New Hampshire, a sign she is considering a run for higher office, too.
Polls and internal party research suggest that 2024 candidates are safest with the Republican base if they sidestep the Trump investigations. This is the only way to possibly win support from Trump’s base of supporters and thus nab the Republican nomination, many GOP strategists say. But there is also little to gain in a crowded field of candidates by idly watching the unprecedented investigations into Trump play out — and some theorize they need the former president to falter in order to capture some of his devoted following, not to mention in order to beat President Joe Biden in a general election.
“We believe there will be a tipping point” with Trump, said one operative working with a rival campaign. “There will come a time when people are exhausted.”
But hoping that an indictment will cause Trump to falter is “whistling past the graveyard,” countered Mark R. Weaver, an Ohio-based Republican strategist and litigator.
“He was impeached twice — and look at his numbers,” Weaver said.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis Megan Varner/Getty
Court dates colliding with the campaign trail
The question of how to grapple with Trump’s court battles is likely to continue for many months and perhaps longer, especially if additional indictments put more court dates on the calendar during the Republican primary season.
Already there are moments when the different criminal investigations are scheduled to collide with the demands of the campaign trail. The Department of Justice’s Smith is expected to soon announce the results of his probe into classified documents at Mar-a-Lago just as the GOP field of presidential candidates continues to grow.
In August, Republicans are slated to hold their first primary debate hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee. That event coincides with the timeline spelled out by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has spent the last two-plus years investigating Trump’s 2020 well-publicized efforts to overturn Georgia's presidential election results.
Trump’s criminal trial is set to begin next March in New York for the allegations that he made illegal hush money payments to an adult film star during his 2016 campaign. That’s shortly after the mega-primary voting on Super Tuesday and during a stretch when states will hold primary elections on a weekly basis.
At some points — and especially during a trial — Trump will have to juggle his campaign with the courts, even if the president’s legal team keeps working to delaythe proceedings against him as much as possible. It’s a contrast he’s already been busy highlighting on his social media site.
“They forced upon us a trial date of March 25th, right in the middle of Primary season,” the former president recently wrote on Truth Social. “Very unfair, but this is exactly what the Radical Left Democrats wanted. It’s called ELECTION INTERFERENCE, and nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before!!!”
The court cases will grab national headlines, making it difficult for rivals to avoid as they hit the campaign trail. And some candidates are not avoiding the topic: New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, another potential contender, told CNN last week that issuing pardons to the Jan. 6 rioters is “nothing I would do.”
Christie, the former New Jersey governor who’s been an outspoken public Trump ally, has needled Trump over the hush money case, too.
“All this bravado from the Trump camp is bologna,” Christie said in April on ABC’s This Week, shortly after Trump posted online that he expected to be indicted by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg. “He’s going to be charged officially on Tuesday. He’s going to have to be mug-shotted, fingerprinted and he’s going to face a criminal trial in Manhattan.”
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
How voters view Trump’s troubles
During a normal primary campaign it would be expected for the presidential candidates to seize on an opponents’ legal issues as a weakness. That logic seems to fall apart for the GOP in 2024.
Polling indicates Republican voters are not swayed so far by the investigations into the former president. After Bragg indicted Trump on criminal charges in New York, a Quinnipiac University poll found a majority of Americans (57 percent) believe criminal charges should disqualify Trump from running for office.
But Republican voters felt differently: 75 percent disagreed, saying criminal charges shouldn’t disqualify Trump from making another run for the presidency. And 93 percent of Republicans said they believe Bragg’s case is “mainly motivated by politics” as opposed to the law.
“It appears his base is his base, and he’s not losing ground with his base,” said Tim Malloy, polling analyst at Quinnipiac University. “And frankly, if they’re not going away now, when would they go away?”
DeSantis is currently Trump’s leading rival; several recent polls have shown him capturing more than 20 percent of the primary vote while other challengers fail to top single-digit support.
The challenge for the Florida governor and other candidates who want to peel off Trump voters will be to make a case that they’re a better option than Trump. They’d need to do that while not angering Trump’s supporters or disregarding his achievements that are popular with Republican voters, said Weaver, the Ohio-based strategist.
It would get even trickier for DeSantis or another candidate if he or she somehow won the GOP nomination and made it into a general election against Biden. Then, a candidate who didn’t criticize Trump during the primary would be in the difficult position of having to defend his or her primary-season comments to potential swing Democrats and Independent voters who could be vital for winning the White House.
“Trump is the elephant in the room for Ron DeSantis. How do you walk through that room without engaging that elephant? This is the great strategic question they have to solve,” said Weaver, the strategist and lawyer. “You have to praise the obvious Trump wins, and point out that more wins like that are possible with a different candidate who has a similar philosophy.”