Former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his New York City hush-money trial has further fueled Republican enthusiasm, with his base rallying around him following Thursday’s historic ruling.
Trump’s political allies protested en masse on the radio and on social media, grassroots supporters pulled out their wallets, and the Republican fundraising website WinRed even appeared to go down after the verdict.
The enthusiasm could be a sign that a disastrous legal outcome for Trump could turn out to be a political boon that helps unify a fractured Republican Party heading into November.
“You can’t say we’re not going to galvanize those less motivated and less likely voters and get them more motivated to participate in the election,” said Zach Roday, a Republican strategist in Virginia. “I think it’s going to increase turnout and I think it’s going to get people who aren’t interested in politics to vote.”
“In the context of addition and subtraction, this is not good news for Joe Biden, but it’s probably good news for Donald Trump,” he said.
Trump’s campaign said Friday that it has raised about $35 million since the ruling, with supporters quickly pouring in. The campaign said 29.7% of donors were first-time users of the WinRed platform, signaling new grassroots interest in Trump.
In one of the clearest signs that the verdict might unite Republicans, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky defended Trump, saying Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should not have brought the case and predicted the conviction would be overturned.
McConnell, a longtime Trump adversary, supported Trump after it became clear he would be the Republican nominee, but his decision to only make a ruling after the verdict was released could rally other Trump skeptics in the GOP, as he remained silent last April when Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges brought by Blagg.
On Friday, Trump issued his harshest denunciation yet of the trial’s judge, Juan Merchan, calling him a “devil” and slamming the trial as “rigged” and a “scam.” Those comments followed a fundraising appeal made shortly after the verdict was handed down, in which Trump called himself a “political prisoner.”
Republican strategists say Trump is understandably infuriated by the verdict but that his comments are part of a broader strategy to galvanize his most ardent supporters.But they say the approach could reach beyond Trump’s base.
“If Donald Trump can continue to convince voters that this jury is rigged and that the judge should basically be a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas because he’s so good at rigging the cards, that would be a huge advantage for Donald Trump,” said Ford O’Connell, a Florida-based Republican strategist.
“He has to be able to continue that narrative because most people who are not political partisans didn’t watch this trial until the verdict was read,” he continued.
Throughout the numerous legal investigations and lawsuits he has faced, Trump has said that the cases against him are also cases against his supporters.
“I don’t think this is a Republican thing,” Roday said. “If this can happen to Trump, it can happen to anyone, because the basis of this lawsuit is ludicrous.”
Still, with so many outside factors influencing the election — inflation, the economy, health care, immigration — it’s unclear whether May’s guilty verdict will stick in the minds of swing voters in November.
“Everybody wants to jump right in and figure out what this means,” said Tucker Martin, a Virginia Republican strategist, adding that “we’ve literally never seen anything like this before.”
“With Trump, so much has already been decided that nothing may change,” he said.
But some question how much the ruling will do to unite the party beyond Trump’s allies, especially given how much support former Republican candidate Nikki Haley of South Carolina has garnered.
“The Republican Party doesn’t have a problem with the Trump base. They have a problem with independents and Nikki Haley, who is not campaigning but is getting 20% of the vote in the primary. A conviction doesn’t solve that problem,” said a former Trump transition official.
Haley, who has said she will vote for Trump over Biden in November’s presidential election, won 20% of the vote in Maryland’s Republican primary, 18% in Nebraska, nearly 22% in Indiana, and more than 100,000 votes in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
But other Republicans point to Trump’s leads in recent polls and argue he doesn’t have a base problem.
“His lead in these polls is due to splitting the Democratic coalition and bringing in new voters,” Roday said. “It’s not due to the ghost vote, the Nikki Haley vote.”
Haley has not responded to Trump’s ruling, but other former presidential candidates have backed him, which could sway some of the voters who supported their candidacies.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is on the shortlist to be Trump’s running mate, told CNN that “the best revenge” for Trump would be success, while former Governor Doug Bergmann, another potential running mate, said a conviction of Trump “wouldn’t upset me.”
Meanwhile, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a longtime critic of Trump, suggested Friday he was concerned about Republican unity following the verdict.
“When you see my party, the party of law and order, pointing a gun at juries, at judges, at the system, it’s not just lunatics, it’s people like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, this party has lost the ability to think for itself,” he said. CNN.
