OPINION:
The 2024 presidential election is still more than a year away, but former President Donald Trump appears to have a lock on the Republican nomination, even while facing 91 felony counts in four different courts.
He has led the field by wide margins. A Wall Street Journal survey this past week showed him at 59%, more than 40 points higher than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his nearest competitor.
In a general election matchup, he was tied at 46% with President Biden or slightly ahead in some polls.
Mr. Biden’s apparent viability is hard to explain. His mental decline is more obvious by the day. He presides over the worst inflation in 40 years, with sticker shock at the gas pump and the supermarket. He has allowed more than 8 million aliens to cross a porous border illegally, along with sex traffickers and enough fentanyl to kill 70,000 Americans yearly.
He also presided over the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. And there’s the widening scandal over his alleged role in his son Hunter’s foreign business deals.
Mr. Biden has embraced extreme leftist positions on gun ownership, climate change, COVID lockdowns and vaccination mandates, transgender issues and abortion access. His Justice Department has targeted pro-lifers, concerned parents and traditionalist Catholics. A majority, including Democrats, say Mr. Biden is too old to serve another term beginning at age 81.
He should be trailing badly.
But Mr. Biden is protected by the media, a branch of the Democratic Party. They spike anything damaging, just as they did in 2020 when they colluded with a corrupt FBI to keep the public in the dark.
Mr. Trump’s popularity stems from his refusal to be cowed by a hostile press and for his performance: his appointment of three strong Supreme Court justices (who helped overturn Roe v. Wade), increased domestic energy production, comparatively low gas prices, a 1.4% inflation rate, record low minority unemployment and a 2.8% mortgage rate.
He moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and brokered a treaty between Israel and two Arab nations. He required federal agencies to eliminate several regulations for every new one, and he called out China for its predatory policies. He launched the Space Force and was rebuilding our military.
Life was better for everyone except left-wing sourpusses and America’s enemies.
But something else looms large in Mr. Trump’s favor: It’s a growing fear among many Americans that we’re losing our self-governing republic to a regime that will do anything to stay in power, from voting fraud to criminalizing political opponents.
No other president has ever been subjected to “lawfare” like Mr. Trump and his associates. The Democrats’ game plan is obvious: Damage him so much that he’ll win the GOP nomination out of sympathy and then beat him in the election by scaring people. They can just blow up the mug shot and make him the focus, not Mr. Biden’s failed policies, no matter whom Democrats nominate.
This is not a sure thing. Turning the legal system against a political opponent before an election is un-American. It’s what happens in communist and Third World countries.
Independents, GOP voters and disaffected Democrats could put Mr. Trump back in the White House even if he’s convicted in any of the courts. The Wall Street Journal poll found that 48% of GOP respondents said they were more likely to vote for Mr. Trump because of the indictments. Only 16% were less likely.
Like the “Russian collusion” impeachment and the second one over Mr. Trump’s phone call to Ukraine asking about Biden corruption, the charges are absurd. All smack of cutthroat politics.
Democrats want to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot in some states by invoking the 14th Amendment. Aimed at the defeated Confederacy, Section 3 bars from public office anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the United States.
Special prosecutor Jack Smith, who filed four felony counts in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, did not dare charge Mr. Trump with “insurrection” but instead “conspiracy to defraud the United States” and to “obstruct an official proceeding.”
The Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot was bad, but it delayed the Electoral College count for only six hours. Some Jan. 6 defendants languished in the D.C. jail without trial for more than 2½ years.
Former Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was not at the Capitol that day, was sentenced last Tuesday to 22 years in prison. Four other Proud Boys leaders were given sentences of 10, 15, 17 and 18 years. Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes got 18 years.
More than 1,150 Jan. 6 defendants have been tried and more than 800 sentenced. They wielded no guns or explosives or set fires. Prosecutors plan to charge another 1,000 people using facial recognition technology. This smacks of China.
The Black Lives Matter/antifa riots of 2020 went on for weeks following George Floyd’s killing by a police officer. Those “mostly peaceful protests” cost at least 25 lives, injured hundreds of police and caused more than $2 billion in property damage. Authorities dropped charges against 90% to 93% of the arrestees, according to The Guardian.
Trump supporters say that only he has the backbone and motive to stage an effective resistance. Never-Trumpers say he’s unelectable. Maybe — or maybe not.
At the moment, he’s a shoo-in for the nomination. But a lot can happen between now and November 2024.
• Robert Knight is a Washington Times columnist and the author of the book “Crooked: What Really Happened in 2020 and How We Can Prevent Vote Fraud” (2022). His website is roberthknight.com.
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