Here’s what to really expect once Donald Trump is criminally indicted
With Donald Trump now on the verge of criminal indictment in three different jurisdictions, the political landscape is about to get changed on its head. Most of the narratives we’ve heard for the past year, about how Trump would never be indicted and would instead skate into the 2024 election cycle, are about to go out the window. But we’re also about to get hit with a whole new round of false narratives about where things will go from here – so it’s important to be prepared for what’s actually going to happen.
We don’t know whether the Fulton County District Attorney, the Manhattan District Attorney, or DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith will indict Trump first. Fulton County appears to be days away at this point. But Manhattan is also seemingly deep into the indictment process. And the details that are leaking about Jack Smith’s indictment process all seem to be arriving well after the fact, meaning we don’t know how far ahead of the news cycle he is. Moreover, we don’t know if any or all of these three prosecutors are coordinating the timing of their indictments in any way.
But once Trump is criminally indicted, a familiar process will play out. Trump will be ordered to surrender himself for arrest and processing. He’ll have an arraignment hearing, during which time he’ll surely ask to be released on bail. The question of bail always comes down to the whim of the judge who’s randomly assigned to the case. But in the Fulton County and Manhattan cases, the odds are good that Trump will be granted bail, because the charges are nonviolent. If the DOJ charges do include the Espionage Act, Trump might have a more difficult time getting bail, and could instead be looking at house arrest.
If Trump does get out on bail, this will set off a round of defeatist hysteria across social media like you’ve never seen. There will be wounded cries of “No, he’s gotten away with it all!” There will be claims that Trump will immediately flee the country “no matter what!” But none of this will track with reality.
In Trump’s narcissistic mind, he has to believe that he can convince a trial jury to acquit him. So even with an overwhelming and obvious criminal case against him, he’s far more likely to simply go about his business while he’s out on bail, and hope for the best at trial. So in that sense, the notion that he’d try to flee the country – in which case he’d be giving up every last bit of what he cares about in life – is an absurd one. It’s the kind of notion that only makes sense on Twitter, and not in the real world.
If Trump does get out on bail, he will surely continue to try to masquerade as a 2024 presidential candidate. But his indictment alone should cause his already weak favorability rating to drop even further. Remember, this has never, ever been about his base. It’s only ever been about his secondary layer of support outside his base, among people who like what he’s selling but don’t worship him. They’ll look at the fact that he’s been indicted, that he was just arrested, that he’s out on bail, that he’s awaiting criminal trial on serious felony charges, and they’ll decide that it’s just not realistic to line up behind him for 2024.
The minute Trump is indicted, his 2024 “campaign” will become a joke. By the time he’s indicted in multiple jurisdictions, his campaign will be a rather weak joke. At that point Trump will likely face travel restrictions. He’ll have to check in with the courts. Other 2024 Republican presidential candidates will spend every day pointing out that Trump is awaiting criminal trial and won’t be available for 2024.
This doesn’t mean that Trump won’t continue forward with some semblance of a 2024 campaign. It’s just that his candidacy will fall apart rather quickly. The notion that his indictment will somehow make him more viable is the kind of laugh out loud absurd simplistic notion that only exists in the fantasy world of social media, and never matches up with the complexities of the real world. If anything, once Trump is indicted, he’ll merely be limping along with his campaign, making few appearances and no real effort, in an effort to bring in money to pay for his legal bills. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much what Trump is already doing.
Trial dates are set partly on the availability of the court system. Trump will, of course, try to delay his trial as much as possible. But achieving even short delays requires competent lawyers. Trump doesn’t have any of those, and last we checked, three of his remaining idiot lawyers just testified against him to a federal grand jury. So it’s not as if Trump can delay his criminal trials forever, just by waving some magic wand.
But we sure are going to hear a lot about Trump’s supposed magic wands. Oh wow, are we going to hear a lot about it. The same folks in the media and pundit class who told you Trump would never be indicted, are now going to turn around and tell you with certainty why Trump will never be convicted. Their arguments will consist of the same simplistic magic wand nonsense that they used when trying to convince you Trump would never be indicted. Your job, as always, is to ignore this kind of ratings and attention driven hyperbole.
In reality, it’s likely that at least one of Trump’s criminal trials will take place by the end of 2023. If he’s convicted, he’ll be sentenced to prison, and he’ll be in prison. There are no magic wands that he can just magically not go prison. Yes, he can appeal. But on charges this serious, he’ll be in prison while his appeal plays out.
Even if Trump’s first trial doesn’t take place until early 2024, then we’d be talking about a situation where he could be convicted and sentenced to prison during the month of the Iowa caucus. You couldn’t come with a bigger gift to the Democrats, than this kind of disastrous chaos in the Republican primary.
For those who are going to ask, yes, Donald Trump can still technically remain a 2024 presidential candidate even once he’s in prison. It’s been done before. But the last time someone tried it, third party candidate Eugene Debs got a whopping six percent of the vote from his prison cell in 1912. And back then, there were no televised debates and such for imprisoned presidential candidates to miss out on. So if Trump wants to keep running as a Republican candidate from prison, it’ll only make a mess of their primary. And if he tries to run as an independent candidate in the general election from prison, it’ll only pull votes away from the Republican nominee.
At this point the deck is stacked overwhelmingly against Donald Trump. The notion that someone who’s about to be incited and go on criminal trial in three different jurisdictions, and is somehow magically going to come out as a presidential frontrunner, is absurd. Yes, random things can always hypothetically go wrong – but those scenarios are always longshots.
Unfortunately, large chunks of the media and pundit class are about to try to convince us that Trump’s extreme longshot odds of somehow surviving this are instead going to be a cake walk for him. They’ll trot out every wacky and highly unrealistic scenario they can think of for how Trump is going to magically come out on top of all of this, and they’ll portray those unlikely scenarios as if they have a 99% or 100% chance of happening. And they’ll try to convince you that unless you buy into this hyperbolic doomsday hysteria, you’re not being “vigilant.”
Meanwhile back in the real world, the deck could not possibly be more stacked against Donald Trump. He’s about to be indicted and arrested. And then he’ll be indicted and arrested again. And again. In his best case scenario he’ll be limping along while out on bail, ahead of a series of criminal trials that are likely to land him in prison before a single 2024 primary vote is even cast. Along the way, the 2024 “campaign” he’ll be trying to run will be a punchline and a charade that even he won’t be able to pretend to take seriously.
“Vigilance” means actively focusing on real threats, not sitting around obsessing over indulgent ones. Donald Trump’s life and existence are being shattered. But someone is going to be the Republican candidate for President in 2024, and there’s a good chance it’ll be some fresh faced new extremist con artist who doesn’t carry the baggage of Trump or anyone who’s ever been associated with Trump. There’s a good chance it’ll be someone we’re not even talking about yet, who tries to sneak up on us. Let’s be vigilant about that threat, even as we watch Trump get steadily dismantled.
