There are strong indications that Donald Trump could soon face his third criminal indictment, this time over his unprecedented effort to overturn an election he lost. And yet much of the country — including the Republican Party and most of Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — is shrugging off the news as just more of the same.
On Capitol Hill, the literal scene of the alleged crime, Republicans who once criticized the twice-impeached former president for failing to protect the Capitol quickly shifted this week into a familiar posture of attacking the Department of Justice, claiming without evidence that the agency is being “weaponized” against Trump.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who once called Trump “morally responsible” for the riot and suggested he face criminal consequences, clammed up when asked if the former president should face charges, telling reporters he wouldn’t be “critiquing” presidential candidates. In McConnell’s world, not defending Trump — or saying much at all — is good enough.
Meanwhile, many of the GOP candidates seeking to beat Trump in the presidential race leaned into the quixotic strategy of rushing to his defense, likely because Republican primary voters are still broadly supportive of the former president despite his role inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress, one of the darkest days in American democracy.
The dynamic has left many in Washington — even those Republicans who aren’t necessarily the biggest Trump fans — feeling a mix of resignation and apathy.
“There’s nothing new under the sun,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said when asked about Trump’s potential looming indictment. “It’s just kind of, it’s become almost literally unbelievable. We’ve gotten pretty used to it all … so it’s become less interesting, weird as it seems.”
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Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) had a particularly bleak take on why a major political party could end up with a nominee who has been indicted multiple times, and why it wouldn’t be more of a problem for voters.
“I think it shows that politicians lie and they know they’re lying,” said Lummis, who backed Trump’s effort to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral results. “The liar knows that people know he’s lying, and the people that are being lied to know they’re being lied to. That is political reality in 2023.”
The idea that everyone is in on the joke may come as a surprise to hundreds of Trump faithful who took up the call on Jan. 6, 2021, and who now face time in prison after storming the Capitol, including the 16 “fake” Trump electors who signed certificates in the scheme to overturn the election.
Although being charged with federal crimes seems to have perversely bolstered Trump’s standing with the GOP electorate, there is evidence that it could harm him in a general election campaign against Biden.
Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who opposes Trump’s 2024 primary bid, said his party could regret picking Trump as its nominee again.
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“There’s a substantial portion of his supporters out there who don’t have high expectations of Trump when it comes to personal behavior, business dealings, honest public commentary and so forth. So it’s sort of baked in, news hits like this,” Young told HuffPost. “But better believe it has an impact on general election voters. Which is why I think it’s unlikely he can win a general election.”
That warning seems to be getting lost on GOP voters, however. Trump continues to dominate the presidential field in both national and state surveys, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a distant second. Biden is viewed unfavorably by the public ― what should be a golden opportunity for Republicans to take back the White House ― yet he would still beat Trump in a hypothetical matchup in 2024, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll of the race.
Even Democrats acknowledge that another Trump indictment will have little political impact.
“I think most people have priced all of this into their opinion of Donald Trump. It’s important he be held accountable but I think much of what people think about him is static about this point,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said.
But Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a Trump critic who voted to convict him in both his impeachment trials, suggested that his legal liabilities dwarfed the debate over his political standing.
“There’s politics and there’s our legal system, our justice system,” Romney said. “You can expect in politics, people will try to glaze over whatever they don’t like, but the justice system grinds fine, it grinds slow, and so we’ll see what the resolution is.”
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While apathy is the clear front-runner when it comes to responding to a potential third indictment for Trump, some politicians find themselves swinging back and forth. See, for example, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who in the past two and a half years has come a long way from his initial reaction to the Capitol riot.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, McCarthy blamed Trump for what happened. He quickly reversed course and has sought to stay in Trump’s good graces ever since, given that his tenuous speakership hinges on support from far-right lawmakers devoted to the former president.
McCarthy’s latest gift to Trump? A vow that the House would vote to expunge the two impeachments against the former president, according to Politico. The speaker apparently made the pledge as a way of apology for his comments last month suggesting that Trump may not be the GOP’s best presidential nominee in 2024.
