The next US presidential election will not take place until November 2024, but the campaign already promises to be explosive. Donald Trump, favorite of the Republican primaries and four times indicted, will probably have to juggle between political rallies and court appointments.
The former president, who hopes to win back the White House through the ballot box, is being prosecuted for having tried to manipulate this same electoral process in 2020.
He assures him that all these cases are just a plot fomented by Democratic President Joe Biden – his likely opponent in 2024 – to block his path.
“How can my political rival Joe-la-Crapule sue me during an election campaign that I win hands down?” Donald Trump said at a meeting in New Hampshire (northeast).
It “forces me to spend time and money on things unrelated to the campaign,” he said.
But, even if he complains about it, Donald Trump has managed to turn these lawsuits to his advantage by using them to raise funds from his supporters. And, according to him, they only reinforce his popularity.
“Every time they charge me, we take off in the polls,” said the septuagenarian. This seems to be generally true, at least among his loyal supporters.
For Jordan Tama, a professor at American University, the upcoming trials will “certainly complicate the Trump campaign”.
“He may have to give up campaign events to participate in legal proceedings” and spend part of his budget on lawyer’s bills, he says.
But, from a purely political point of view, it is not certain that these prosecutions will upset the course and the outcome of the elections, according to Jordan Tama. “The ranking of the main candidates has hardly changed,” he recalls.
Next year, Donald Trump’s calendar promises to be busy.
He was indicted Monday by a Georgia court for attempting to reverse the result of the state’s 2020 election. The trial date has not yet been set.
This procedure joins another, broader one, on his alleged maneuvers to manipulate the outcome of the ballot in seven crucial states, including Georgia. In this federal case, the special prosecutor proposed a trial as early as January 2024, a few days before the start of the Republican primaries.
In March, Donald Trump will have to explain himself to the justice of the State of New York on accounting fraud linked to the purchase of the silence of an actress of X movies before the presidential election of 2016.
And he will be back in court in May, six months before the presidential election, this time for his alleged flippant handling of classified documents.
For now, Donald Trump’s Republican rivals are careful not to criticize his troubles too firmly, for fear of offending his base.
“The consensus is that at some point Republicans will understand that Trump is burdened with more and more handicapped cases and that defeat against the Democrats becomes more likely,” analyzes Larry Sabato, political scientist from the University of Virginia.
“Except that’s what everyone predicts, and so far it hasn’t happened.”
Jordan Tama considers that most Americans already have a clear opinion of Donald Trump.
“Those who support him will do so whatever happens in the courts” and “those who don’t like him will continue to dislike him”, says the expert.
If the former president wins the Republican nomination, the election could be decided by a small number of undecided voters.
For them, “the legal proceedings will harm Trump, because they are a reminder of his serious weaknesses as a person and as a leader,” said Jordan Tama.
“But it is not at all certain that this determines the result,” he recalls. “The election will also likely be based on other factors, such as the economy, which often influences the outcome of polls.”
16/08/2023 13:30:06 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
