Despite what some Republicans are saying, getting indicted is generally a poor political strategy.
Prominent Republicans disagree about a lot these days, but on one point they have found consensus: Getting charged with a crime would be great news for Donald Trump.
After the former president predicted that he will be arrested in Manhattan tomorrow—a forecast that seems questionable, though an indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg does seem to be imminent—conventional wisdom quickly developed on the right that Trump would be the big winner.
“The prosecutor in New York has done more to help Donald Trump get elected president than any single person in America today,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said. “Mr. Bragg, you have helped Donald Trump, amazing.”
At National Review, Rich Lowry announced, “It’s going to be very bad for the country and good politically—at least in the short term and perhaps for the duration—for Donald J. Trump.” (Lowry didn’t bother to offer any basis for this claim.)
The former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich, now running a pro-Trump super PAC called MAGA Inc., said in a statement that an indictment “will not only serve to coalesce President Trump’s support, but it will become the single largest in-kind contribution to a federal campaign in political history.”
Other Republican contenders for president didn’t make predictions quite so firm, but they either hastened to criticize Bragg or kept their mouth shut, both indications that they see this as a moment of strength for Trump, rather than a good opening to bury their own daggers in a weakened rival’s back.
The immediate spin, backed by so little actual argument, is a bit dizzying and bit déjà vu. Back in the 2008 presidential campaign, when the GOP nominee, John McCain, forgot how many houses he owned, the pundit Mark Halperin became infamous for a prediction: “My hunch is this is going to end up being one of the worst moments in the entire campaign for one of the candidates, but it’s Barack Obama.”
That became a notoriously bad take, but Halperin is unchastened. “You are about to increase the odds that Donald Trump will win another four years in the White House,” he wrote in italics on his Substack.
