The 2024 election will determine whether Donald Trump returns to the White House
The 2024 election will determine whether Donald Trump returns to the White House. It could also decide if he’ll face time behind bars.
Now slapped with his third criminal indictment — this time for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and block the transfer of presidential power — for Trump, winning is about more than ego, redemption, score-settling or the future of the country.
“This election may very well be about Donald Trump’s personal freedom,” said Ari Fleischer, a longtime Republican strategist. “It’s not an exaggeration to say, if convicted, he could be sentenced to prison unless he wins and he uses the levers of justice to reverse it or stop it or drop it.»
The deeply personal stakes for Trump add to what is already an election unlike any other in modern history. It’s now not only a debate over the country’s challenges, but a partisan fight over whether the 77-year-old former president and GOP frontrunner should spend time in prison. Putting that issue out front, Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted that she «will still vote for Trump even if he’s in jail.”
Critics have long alleged that Trump’s fear of prosecution was a chief motivator for his decision to mount another campaign. While Trump denies that — insisting that charges never would have been brought had he decided against running — the new indictment ensures his campaign and legal issues are now intertwined.
“The legal messaging is the political messaging and the political messaging is the legal messaging,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said of the new reality. “It’s part of what we’re running on. Trump has made the legal issues a big focus of his campaign and from our standpoint, it’s messaging that works.»
The combined 78 state and federal charges against Trump are already dominating his stump speeches as he seeks to portray himself as the victim of a politicized Justice Department bent on damaging the prospects of President Joe Biden’s chief political rival. At his rallies, he tries to frame the charges as not just an attack on him, but his supporters.
“They’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you,” he told the crowd at a weekend rally in Erie, Pennsylvania.
On a more practical level, Trump is confronting an unprecedented balancing act, campaigning while facing possible trials in at least three different jurisdictions.
