The unusual political profitability that Donald Trump has obtained from his indictment for 34 charges that were communicated to him on Tuesday by a New York judge has silenced the dissenting voices within the Republican Party. The echo of his defiant statements before and after going through the court have activated for the moment the springs of a stony unit of the conservative block. Not even Ron DeSanctis, governor of Florida, who after the elections last November appeared as the best placed candidate to challenge him for the Republican candidacy for the presidency in 2024, has dared to deviate from the general norm, an unequivocal sign that the party has folded to the designs of the billionaire.
At the same time that the percentages of intention to vote for Trump in next year’s primaries increase, the influence of those who feel uncomfortable with the dangerous radicalization of the messages that are broadcast from Mar-a-Lago decreases. Similarly, activity on social media has reinforced the belief of many in the conspiracy theory fanned by the former president and the victimization of him as someone subject to persecution by the Democratic Party, the FBI and the courts. In Trump’s behavior, he encourages a complete challenge to the judicial system that, incidentally, is worth it to attack those who have hailed the charge as an example of equality before the law.
To all this must be added that a phenomenon from 2016 is repeated: if it was said then that a significant part of the free publicity of the Republican candidate came from the media, even from those that were hostile to him, which multiplied in the follow-up of his unusual combat strategy, now the same thing happens. It is not only Fox News, the most conservative headlines and social networks that ensure an unlimited presence of Trump at all hours, but the complex American information system has become in its entirety a sounding board that keeps Trump in the center of any debate and conditions the road book of the Democrats entirely.
10 months after the primaries begin and a year and a half after the presidential election, there is no survey that dares to predict whether Trump’s momentum thanks to the impeachment will be long-term or will decrease when, as is to be expected, other causes against him -the attempts to reverse the 2020 defeat, the case of the documentation found in his Florida home, his role in the assault on Congress, the opacity of his businesses-. But it is unlikely that the number of his most radical supporters will diminish appreciably. In an irreconcilably divided society in which one of the major parties does not lift a finger to defend the rule of law, which Trump attacks every day, the prospect of new indictments seems highly effective fuel whatever the development of events. and the approach that the Democratic Party gives to the campaign for 2024. Perhaps the behavior of classic Republicanism in urban media is more decisive for electoral purposes, a minority with silenced voices that perhaps had enough with four years of Trump in the White House.