Needless to say, Donald Trump’s announcement Thursday that he will be indicted in the classified documents probe has understandably sparked a firestorm on the right, with many questioning the timing and pointing to the highly politicized, two-tiered system of justice off of which the Biden administration is operating – especially considering what we’ve learned this week concerning the Biden bribery allegations.
But as new information continues to roll in including a supposedly damning tape at the center of the indictment where Trump allegedly admits wrongdoing, questions are swirling about what this will mean for Trump going forward in terms of his 2024 presidential election campaign, specifically, how this will impact voter opinions on the former president.
The question, in my opinion, was answered just a few days before news of the coming indictment in a heated exchange between New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) and former Biden press secretary-turned-MSNBC host Jen Psaki.
Sununu, perhaps feeling a little freer to express his unvarnished commentary considering he has decided not to jump into the presidential race, told Psaki that in the scheme of things any indictment past or present against Trump likely won’t matter in the eyes of most voters because Trump’s critics on the left and in the media have thoroughly discredited themselves with the Russia collusion nonsense – and there’s no going back for them at this point:
SUNUNU: Obviously they don’t. No, they absolutely don’t matter. No. These indictments, if I may, a combination of the media, you’re creating The Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome, right?
What happened in New York was wrong. I mean, it really was. They are beating up on Trump for political reasons, everybody sees that. What happened with the Russian “collusion” that never existed effectively exonerated the guy, so he can play a victim card. You’ve all created a situation where, God, what kind of planet are we on where Donald Trump’s become the victim? That’s really what it is.
PSAKI: Well, first of all I think–I think–well, we know-
SUNUNU: And so now nobody believes, nobody believes it.
PSAKI: Well, we know, I have to stop you right there, because we know very clearly that Putin and the Kremlin did intervene in our election in order to try to help Donald Trump back in 2016. So we know that is true but you may think that they shouldn’t engage in this as a messaging tool because it is not helpful to them, is that what you are saying? –
SUNUNU: Yeah, I’m not going to relitigate, you know, the Russian collusion nonsense that went on for two years-
PSAKI: You don’t need to relitigate it, it’s been litigated by lawyers and investigators.
SUNUNU: Where everyone said it was real, yeah, yeah, it’s nonsense.
PSAKI: That’s arguably not true, but continue.
SUNUNU: Yeah, but nobody buys that any attack on Trump isn’t anything but political. You’ve created, everybody has, kind of, created this scenario, he’s playing it to the fullest. He is playing the violin strings better than anyone imagined which is why his poll numbers have miraculously, are actually going up.
Watch:
This was perhaps my favorite moment, the look on Sununu’s face when Psaki tried to claim the Russia collusion thing with Trump was real:
Sununu is absolutely right here in that regardless of how the indictments against Trump pan out in the courts that this is unlikely to ding him with a majority of the American public (outside of the rabid leftists who already despise him). In fact, after the first indictment, his poll numbers shot up big time because at this point people see right through the weaponization of the government at the highest levels and are just fed up with it.
While this is good news for Trump, it is going to present problems in the future for the justice system because the American people need to have a certain level of confidence in it, that it isn’t being used and abused for political reasons, to punish opponents.
There are going to be charges leveled in the future against someone in politics, maybe even Trump, that actually do have teeth and which deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But because so few people have faith in that system anymore, the court of public opinion is going to be absolutely brutal for its defenders, and they’ll have no one to blame for their inability to win over the trust of the public but themselves.
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