DAN PROFT COMMENTARY: Trump is leading but he’s hardly lapping Biden the way he did his GOP challengers. Popular opinion in politics is fickle in America.
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In his report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents which dates back nearly to the beginning of the Republic, special prosecutor Robert Hur committed a cardinal sin to the Left by stating what is observably true.
Just as you are to believe that the 6’5″, 210 lb. human with the Sonny Crockett five o’clock shadow is just another girl on your daughter’s high school volleyball team, you are to believe that Joe Biden is presently at the “top of his game,” as former Captain Kangaroo TV show host turned Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently claimed.
And so came the onslaught of Soviet spin. Robert Hur, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is a MAGA cultist. The Hur report doesn’t “live in reality” as so decreed by French-Haitian Raggedy Ann, Karin Jean-Pierre. And, my personal favorite fairy tale, behind closed doors Joe Biden is Plato even though publicly he is unable to tackle any material more complicated than Play-doh.
That said, for the GOP to obsess about Biden’s mental unfitness is to sell past the close. After his performance in his presser to address the Hur report, whoever is unconvinced of his incapacity–and it is a distinctly small minority of Americans at this point–is not going to be persuaded.
Piling on is both unnecessary and unhelpful. It is reminiscent of Trump supporters’ lowering the expectations for Biden prior to the presidential debates in 2020 such that if Biden avoided soiling himself on stage he would be perceived as the victor.
Trump supporters, please stay out of this man’s way.
Even more important for Trump and his supporters than unwittingly aiding the witless POTUS is to start forcefully addressing the one thing that could derail his return to the Presidency: the Trump trials.
Trump is leading but he’s hardly lapping Biden the way he did his GOP challengers. Popular opinion in politics is fickle. Just ask George HW Bush who was cruising to re-election in ’92 or the winning co-president from the ’92 election who was a mortal lock in 2016 until they weren’t.
What concerns me and should concern Trump is how swing voters in swing states will respond to a felony conviction of the former President of any kind in any jurisdiction under any legal pretense to be followed by a half-a-billion dollars worth of a saturation bombing campaign on TV and the Internet with the simple message: America cannot put a convicted felon in the White House.
To that point, as reported in Forbes, “A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll earlier this month found 53% of voters in seven battleground states would not vote for Trump if he were found guilty of a crime—including 23% of Republicans—while 55% would not vote for him if he were sentenced to prison.”
In South Carolina, a Washington Post/Monmouth University poll found 36% of GOP primary voters would want Trump to be replaced as the Republican nominee if he were convicted after winning the nomination, and only 62% would vote for Trump if he were convicted and remained on the ballot.”
Trump would be foolish to underestimate the deference to the criminal justice system ingrained in the minds of most Americans.
You know the bromides we repeat to each other: No one is above the law. I trust the jury.
Our justice system is predicated on the people’s faith in it which is generally justified but with exceptions. The Trump indictments are such exceptions. This is the case he must try in the court of public opinion in the explicit terms of anticipated convictions if, as is probable, the business records case in Manhattan goes to trial next month as scheduled. This is a political imperative for Trump unless or until it becomes clear none of the trials will be adjudicated before the November election.
Trump would also be foolish to fail to appreciate that his standing among malleable swing voters in swing states is rife with reluctance. Many have moved to him because of Biden’s “i’s”–inflation, incompetence and importation of illegals–but that doesn’t mean they’re reliably locked-in.
As Trump soon dispatches Nikki Haley and formally moves to the general election campaign, now is the time to expand his message on his legal travails to include the likelihood of rigged convictions by prosecutors’ offices, courts and juries composed of his political enemies.
It doesn’t require him changing his “I’ve been indicted more times than Al Capone” rap just adding to it with something like the following,
“Look, I am innocent of these, pardon the pun, trumped up charges. However, as we have all seen, the Left has created a two-tier justice system wherever they’re in charge and they are in charge in Manhattan and Atlanta and Washington, D.C. There is one set of laws for people who share their politics and another set for people, like me, and millions of Americans who don’t. This is another instance where they’re really coming after you and I’m standing in the way. I want to emphasize this doesn’t just apply to me. It applies to a conservative Catholics targeted by the FBI. It applies to a pro-life dad in rural Pennsylvania. It applies to hundreds of Americans persecuted for peacefully assembling around the Capitol to petition their government on January 6, 2021. It applies to all law-abiding Americans who have been forced by their government to finance the lives of people who entered this country illegally and to endure the endemic violence sanctioned by governments who refuse to detain, prosecute and imprison repeat violent offenders, citizens and non-citizens alike.
“All this is to say, if I am compelled to stand trial before the November election in any of these kangaroo jurisdictions, absent unexpected political bravery from some participant in the process, I will be wrongly convicted of a felony. What you need to know is that to believe any forthcoming conviction is just is to support the injustice perpetrated by Leftist politicians masquerading as officers of the court who literally campaigned on getting Trump by any means necessary.
“You should also know that an unjust conviction will not stop me. In fact, it will only fuel me. We need to end the criminalization of political disagreements just as we need to restore the rule of law over the rule of politics at our border and in our major cities. That is the thrust of my campaign because only through this restoration of equal protection under the law can we Make America Great Again.”
It is always better to correctly anticipate what will happen and explain why it will than to refuse to embrace the likelihood of the coming storm and resolutely deny it’s raining when it comes. Biden chose to do the latter. Trump should do the former.
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