Even in his home state of Florida, Trump’s calls for protest resulted in a whimper outside the federal courthouse where his arraignment took place.
Donald Trump’s second arraignment played out this week much like the first: Small crowds of supporters turned up outside the courthouse alongside a media circus of hundreds of reporters from around the world.
Federal and local authorities were on high alert ahead of Trump’s court appearance, as some Trump allies called for protests and retribution and alluded to potential violence. Earlier this week, Laura Loomer tweeted about a “peaceful rally” outside of the arraignment proceedings on Tuesday at noon, while authorities also warned that a local chapter of the Proud Boys had plans to rally outside the federal courthouse.
Trump, who has called the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME,” called for protests on Sunday afternoon during a radio interview with his longtime ally Roger Stone. Stone encouraged protesters to remain peaceful, civil, and legal.
Trump aides predicted some of the MAGA faithful would turn violent, in comments to the Daily Beast.
Yet while Miami police and city officials said Monday that they were prepared to handle up to 50,000 demonstrators, just several hundred supporters of the former president showed up to the courthouse throughout the day to face the sweltering 90-degree heat, and the demonstrations remained peaceful.
It remains to be seen whether the low turnout on his home turf is an indication of a potentially dwindling body of diehard support.
A new Economist/YouGov poll suggests that Republicans are not as quick to defend the former president over the classified-documents case as they have been with his previous legal woes.
Fifty-six percent of Republicans and 91 percent of Democrats believe that a president taking classified documents after leaving office is a very or somewhat serious matter.
Last August, 53 percent of Republicans approved of Trump taking the records. Now, that number has fallen to just 39 percent, the poll found.
Still, 72 percent of Republicans do not think he should face any criminal charges.
Trump ultimately pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts in connection with his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Those counts include willful retention of national-defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and making false statements and representations.
NR’s editors have called the indictment “damning”:
At many junctures, most recently with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s flimsy charges, we’ve had occasions to point out how Donald Trump’s adversaries have twisted the law in a politically motivated effort to nail the former president. And we certainly do not welcome the precedent of a federal prosecutor, who ultimately reports to the president, indicting that president’s leading rival for reelection. That said, it is impossible to read the indictment against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case and not be appalled at the way he handled classified documents as an ex-president, and responded to the attempt by federal authorities to reclaim them.
Former attorney general Bill Barr shared a similar sentiment on Sunday, saying that “if even half of [the indictment] is true, then he’s toast.” He called the idea of Trump presenting himself as a victim of a witch hunt “ridiculous.”
Despite the more serious nature of the second indictment, Trump appeared more spirited this time around, after appearing sullen-faced at the Manhattan court this spring.
He gave a thumbs up to supporters as he left the courthouse yesterday and then made an unexpected campaign-like stop at the Versailles restaurant in Little Havana where he posed for photos with supporters. There, a rabbi prayed over Trump and the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to the former president, who turns 77 on Wednesday.
The indictment has turned into another fundraising and campaigning opportunity for Trump, and another test for the rest of the 2024 Republican field.
Vivek Ramaswamy has led the charge, insisting in a rally outside the Miami courthouse yesterday that Republican presidential contenders must sign a pledge to pardon Trump in the event he is convicted, or to explain why they will not.
“Each of our paths to electoral success would be easier if President Trump were eliminated from competition, but that is the wrong result for our country. The fact that we are running against Trump gives us credibility to denounce this politicized prosecution,” Ramaswamy wrote in a letter to his opponents.
“I condemn these charges by the U.S. Department of Justice. Below, I have signed a commitment to pardon President Trump promptly on January 20, 2025, for the federal charges. . . . I respectfully request that you join me in this commitment or else publicly explain why you will not,” he added.
Nikki Haley said yesterday she’d be “inclined in favor of a pardon” for Trump if he were convicted, saying the issue is “less about guilt and more about what’s good for the country.”
“And I think it would be terrible for the country to have a former president in prison for years because of a documents case,” Haley said during an appearance on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. “That’s something you’ve seen in a third-world country. I saw that at the United Nations. So I would be inclined in favor of a pardon. But I think it’s really premature at this point when he’s not even been convicted of anything.”
Much like with Trump’s first indictment in Manhattan on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Haley and other Republicans have adopted a position that a two-tiered system of justice has emerged with one set of rules governing Trump and another that applies to everyone else. Fox News ran side-by-side footage of President Biden speaking at the White House and Trump speaking from Bedminster, N.J., during the 8 p.m. hour with a chyron that read “wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.” (Fox subsequently issued a statement saying the chyron was immediately taken down and the situation was addressed.)
“Today we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country,” Trump told supporters and donors at Bedminster. “Very sad thing to watch, a corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty, right in the middle of a presidential election in which he’s losing very badly.”
Trump questioned why he has been treated differently from other public figures who allegedly mishandled classified materials, including Biden, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton. He said his former vice president, Mike Pence, was rightly exonerated.
“It’s a political persecution like something straight out of a fascist or communist nation,” Trump said.
But while Haley said she’d be inclined to pardon Trump if it came to that, she acknowledged that “if the claims in the indictment are true — if they’re true — then Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security, and that’s not OK.”
The Trump pardon talk comes days after presidential contender Chris Christie this week hit candidates who are afraid to take on Trump. “How do you beat someone if you won’t talk about him? How do you beat them if you won’t distinguish yourself from them?” Christie asked during a CNN town hall on Monday.
He vowed to take Trump on directly this cycle, recognizing that he and others made a big mistake in 2016 when they went after each other instead of Trump.
“This is what I don’t understand with the other candidates who won’t even say his name. I watched that Joni Ernst Roast and Ride. It was like [Trump] was Voldemort from Harry Potter. Nobody wanted to mention his name,” he said and accused the other candidates of being “afraid” of Trump.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has remained largely quiet throughout Trump’s second indictment, though he briefly discussed the politicization of the DOJ during a speech at the North Carolina Republican convention on Friday, without directly naming Trump.
“As a naval officer, if I would have taken classified [documents] to my apartment, I would have been court-martialed in a New York minute,” DeSantis said.
“Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president?” DeSantis added. “I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let’s enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules. You can’t have one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions that it doesn’t like and that’s what you see.”
But at least one other Republican candidate has come out swinging against Trump; Asa Hutchinson has called on the former president to drop out of the race.
Trump, meanwhile, vowed to “never leave” the race.
Around NR
• Charles C. W. Cooke warns that the primary system is failing Americans. As he sees it, Americans have made clear that they don’t want to see Joe Biden or Donald Trump on the ballot, but, in response, “America’s primary voters have decided to flip them the bird.”
The idea that undergirds the modern primary system is that rank-and-file voters will be more adept at choosing appealing political candidates than will a handful of party apparatchiks in a faraway smoke-filled room. . . . But is this true? I’m not so sure. Absent a dramatic change, the primary voters within both of America’s major political parties look on course to renominate a pair of figures whom a supermajority of their compatriots disdain.
• “Anti-wokeness isn’t enough to beat Trump,” Noah Rothman argues. Instead of painting a stark contrast between himself and Trump, DeSantis has “preferred to emphasize niche issues” that a new analysis suggests have “narrow appeal.”
The case for Ron DeSantis isn’t hard to make, though he himself seems to struggle to make it. DeSantis brings to the table everything Republicans like about Trump (while being vague enough about the particulars so individual Republicans can define that for themselves) without the incontinence that renders Trump himself unacceptable to a critical mass of the general electorate and weakens his ability to get things done in office.
• Jim Geraghty collects a list of those aforementioned niche issues and notes that the Florida governor is “picking some strange battles.”
In the last few days, Ron DeSantis has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who will “do better” than Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett and pledged to change the name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg. He has not, however, offered even a syllable of criticism of the way Donald Trump kept classified information at Mar-a-Lago.
• On the flip side, Luther Ray Abel argues that DeSantis’s battles do in fact make sense for someone working to appeal to southern primary voters.
• Over on the other side of the aisle, big-name Democrats have a “curious way of ‘helping’ Joe Biden,” Jim Geraghty observes. Just look at California governor Gavin Newsom’s recent call for donations to his political action committee, Campaign for Democracy, or Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s launch of a new federal PAC.
Now, Whitmer could simply record a video encouraging you to donate to Biden’s reelection bid. But instead, she wants you to give money to her PAC, so she can decide which Democrats to help. And hey, if for some reason Biden can’t run, she would coincidentally and conveniently have a major campaign war chest and a bigger national reputation. Just in case, of course.