Former DNC Chair Complains That Trump Defies ‘Old Political Rules’
While former President Donald Trump and many of his allies have described mounting criminal charges as a political ploy to derail his 2024 bid for a second term, the legal challenges appear to only be increasing his popularity among voters.
According to a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted last month, Trump was the top choice of a whopping 62% of likely Republican primary voters, which was a 46-point advantage over his nearest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Furthermore, pollsters found that more than three-fourths of those GOP voters believed the most recent indictment against the former president was politically motivated.
At least at this point in the 2024 election cycle, Democratic efforts to sideline Trump seem to be backfiring — and some prominent figures in the party are starting to sound the alarms.
Former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile weighed in on the current situation during a recent roundtable discussion on ABC’s “This Week.”
Comparing Trump’s appeal with previous presidential candidacies — specifically those of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama — that “galvanized the American people,” she noted that the current GOP front-runner appears to be immune to traditional political attacks.
“I’ve never seen anything like this with Donald Trump,” Brazile asserted. “I mean, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
She went on to castigate him for using his “ugly mug shot” as a fundraiser, but tacitly acknowledged that her party’s best efforts to smear him are not working.
“This is a movement, and anyone who thinks you can apply the old political rules to trying to defeat this candidate, based on he’s scary, he’s ugly, whatever you might want to call him, this is a movement, and we have to respect that fact that it’s a movement,” she concluded.
Others on the roundtable seemed similarly perplexed by Trump’s appeal. For his part, anchor George Stephanopoulos was dumbfounded by the fact that Americans are not clamoring to support President Joe Biden’s re-election.
“It is kind of shocking in a way that, despite all of the baggage Donald Trump carries, he’s tied with Joe Biden right now,” the former Clinton administration senior adviser proclaimed.
Prior to his fourth indictment, announced last month by Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump riffed on his soaring poll numbers during a campaign event in Alabama.
“Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls,” he said. “We need one more indictment to close out this election. One more indictment, and this election is closed out.”
