James Johnson is co-founder of JL Partners. He was the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser to Theresa May as Prime Minister, 2016-2019.
The scene outside Trump Tower on Friday was chaotic. Music blared, a jumpsuit-clad Trump impersonator bounced around, a gaggle of news anchors gave their takes to camera.
One man cycled past screaming “lock him up”, another yelled back “Trump’s our hero!”, Alicia Key’s Empire State of Mind spluttered from a passing rickshaw. It was less a tinderbox, more a jukebox: a cacophony of passers-by getting in on the biggest show in town.
One day before, Trump had been convicted on 34 felony charges by a jury in Manhattan.
The response from Republicans has been less anger and more disappointment. Like the scene on Fifth Avenue, this is not erupting into violence on the streets. In a JL Partners poll taken the evening after the verdict was announced, the main emotion from Republicans was “sad”.
The poll, conducted for DailyMail.com, also found that the verdict has had a net positive impact on views of Trump overall, by a margin of six points. The former president cited the polling himself at his news conference from Trump Tower.
But Trump will need to wait before he can fully claim victory. The verdict’s impact is yet to be borne out in voting intention polls. Like the Conservatives in the UK, the Democrats do better amongst those voters who say they do not know how they would currently vote. The verdict could shore up undecided voters to Biden’s camp.
But there is little doubt that these legal travails have changed the game for Trump so far.
Before the indictments started dropping in April last year, people were searching for alternatives to the former president, sick of the drama and political upheaval. Ron DeSantis was poised to win the support of Trump supporters who felt their man had had his time in the sun.
The indictments put those waverers firmly in Trump’s camp. By the end of the year he had the nomination sewn up, formalized in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina in at the start of 2024. It has also made him more competitive with Independents: they recoiled at the idea of another Trump presidency this time last year, but now are more concerned by what they see as an overreaching legal service than his conduct itself.
Joe Biden has enabled this. Though he has not directly ordered the investigations, he gave room for Merrick Garland, his Attorney General, to bring federal indictments on behalf of the government. Though the President has less sway over state cases, he has let them proceed without criticism.
In so doing he has nodded through, at least in the case of the hush money Manhattan trial, what even Democratic-leaning lawyers say is a spurious case that was brought against Trump because he is Trump.
With it having rallied voters to Trump’s cause, this, along with his decision to stand in a race most voters think he is unfit to be in, could prove to be the unwinding of Biden, just as it marked the unravelling of DeSantis.
Holman W Jenkins Jr of the Wall Street Journal describes it best, in an excoriating op-ed well worth reading in full. This is his peroration:
“In my book, the verdict already is final: One of the worst decisions by any president in history is Joe Biden’s decision to seek a second term. This decision is so terrible it may not be redeemable in the eyes of history even if his roll of the dice succeeds and he blocks Trump’s return to the presidency rather than being the vehicle for Mr. Trump’s restoration.
“In spirit, his decision is hardly different from raiding mom’s purse for drug money. Now add to the price his unleashing of the dogs of lawfare into our politics. The consequences may be repulsively incalculable for decades to come.”
The situation now goes into uncharted territory. Trump’s sentencing is on 11 July 11. Before that, he has a head-to-head debate with Biden. Though the consensus is that a 77-year-old without former convictions likely will not be sent to prison, nothing can be ruled out. That unleashes events wholly unpredictable in their nature.
But perhaps we should dial back on the predictions of widespread violence and disruption. I’ll leave that last word to another passer-by on Fifth Avenue. As he surveyed the scene of cameras he shouted – with genuine puzzlement. “What the hell happened?”
