CAMP HILL, Pa. — Donald Trump has accused Ron DeSantis of being a shapeshifting political fraud, argued he’s bought and paid for by wealthy donors and even baselessly suggested — without evidence — his political rival engaged in inappropriate romantic relationships.
And yet Florida’s Republican governor, visiting this battleground state to build national support before a likely presidential campaign, still rushed to the former president’s defense on Saturday against an indictment brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“You have this Manhattan district attorney, who, his whole platform when he got elected, was that he was going to downgrade as many felonies as possible to misdemeanors,” said DeSantis, speaking as part of his nationwide book tour at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, a gathering of conservative leaders in Pennsylvania.
He continued: “So now he turns around purely for political purposes, indicts a former president on misdemeanor offenses that they’re straining to try to convert into felonies. That is when you know that the law has been weaponized for political purposes. That is when you know the left is using that to target its political opponents.”DeSantis’ defense amounted to only a short detour during his regular stump speech — but it illustrates the vexing challenge facing the governor and every other potential Republican candidate.
Even as they seek to displace him as the GOP’s leader, Trump’s rivals have almost uniformly moved to defend him in anticipation of his expected indictment in New York City on Tuesday, arguing that the former president is being unfairly targeted because Democrats want to take down a marquee Republican.
The resulting praise for Trump has not only put his would-be foes in an awkward position, it’s drowned out their own messages and once again made the former president the center of attention in the GOP presidential primary. And a race in which Trump was already widely considered a favorite has, at least for now, tilted even further in his direction.
“This is going to solidify the Republican base around Trump,” said Rick Wilson, a longtime GOP strategist and vocal critic of the former president. “It is going to lock in further loyalty and fealty to Donald Trump. I would make the argument that the primary was over the day the indictment was announced.”
Other Republicans are less bullish about what Tuesday’s indictment — expected to be centered on the allegation he paid an adult film star hush money during the 2016 election — means for Trump and the 2024 primary, arguing that whatever bump in support he receives might not last over the duration of a long race.
A Yahoo News/YouGuv poll released Saturday found Trump’s advantage over DeSantis growing in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, with the former president now receiving 57% support to the governor’s 31%.
Two weeks ago, the same survey showed Trump’s lead over DeSantis was only 8 percentage points, 47% to 39%.
Other surveys showed Trump’s advantage over the rest of the GOP field growing even before he acknowledged last week that he had been indicted, a consequence some Republicans attribute to weeks of speculation that he was about to be charged. A Fox News survey released last week found him at 54% support in the GOP field, up 11 percentage points from February.
DeSantis was the closest potential candidate to Trump, receiving 24% backing from GOP voters.
“The base is responding to him,” said Jeffrey Lord, a longtime Trump advocate who was in attendance Saturday watching DeSantis speak in Pennsylvania “It’s not that they don’t like Governor DeSantis, it’s that they’re really upset about this and they want to, you know, stand by their man, as it were.”
A Trump aide tweeted Monday as the president flew to New York for his arraignment that his campaign had raised $7 million since the indictment.
Lord said he had never seen the party more unified than it is now in defending Trump. And, indeed, in addition to support from DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has voiced concern about the indictment, the former president has received the backing of GOP leaders like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and conservative figures like Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Fighting for attention
Not every Republican candidate has rushed to Trump’s defense: Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Sunday reiterated that he thought the former president should drop out of the race after his indictment.
But the Arkansas Republican has his own indictment-related challenges, announcing Sunday that he’s running for president at a time when media coverage is fixated on the charges against Trump.
It wasn’t just a problem for Hutchinson, either. Haley was visiting the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on Monday, trying to draw attention to her plans to fix an issue of visceral importance to the conservative base. But her visit was overshadowed by wall-to-wall cable network coverage of Trump as he flew from Florida to New York.
“Turn on any TV, any cable channel, and what are you seeing?” Wilson said. “All Trump, all Trump, all Trump.”
Wilson called the coverage a “time loop” back to 2016, when the then-insurgent candidate used intense media coverage to unexpectedly vault to the top of the GOP presidential primary field.
The Republican base could continue to rally behind Trump throughout the primary, GOP strategists point out, amid a series of other looming investigations, including allegations that he mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Each new wave of charges could intensify its support for him.
Other Republicans, however, are skeptical any short-term boost in support for Trump will last over the course of a long primary. And the compounding effect of each new charge could persuade some GOP voters, especially those wary about the party’s chances in a general election next year, to move on from the former president.
“At this point, everybody’s opinion of Donald Trump is pretty well set,” said Lowman Henry, a conservative leader in Pennsylvania. “You either like him or you don’t. … I think you’d have a hard time finding 2% of the population that hasn’t already made up their mind on him. So no matter how much the left attacks or how much they weaponize indictments, I don’t think it changes for primary voters.”
During his speech, DeSantis tried to weave his criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg into a larger argument about his opposition to liberal prosecutors, boasting to the audience about how he removed a district attorney (Hillsborough County’s Andrew Warren) from office.
DeSantis’ speech Saturday was well-received, and some in attendance said afterward that they viewed the contest as a two-person race between him and Trump.
The governor himself indicated that, even if he’s losing ground in the polls, he remains undeterred about a potential future campaign.
“I have only begun to fight,” DeSantis said to cheers, “because we are going to save liberty in this country.”
