Four candidates were on the campaign trail, meeting and greeting voters in frigid Iowa. A fifth was sitting in a courtroom in rainy Washington, trying to fend off a criminal case that might land him in jail.
But in the upside-down, topsy-turvy world of American politics, it is Donald Trump – not Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson or Vivek Ramaswamy – who is expected to win the first Republican presidential nominating contest in a landslide next week.
This is not despite but because of a host of legal woes that would have long buried a normal candidate in a normal time have become a feature, not a bug, of his 2024 presidential run. “Unprecedented” is the most overused word of the Trump era but this week really is, well, unprecedented as the collision of his electoral and judicial calendars gets real.
On Tuesday he was in court as his lawyers tried to convince the three judges that a federal criminal case charging him with election subversion should be dismissed before it goes to trial. On Wednesday, Trump will sit for a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, counterprogramming a CNN debate in the same city between DeSantis and Haley. On Thursday, expect to see Trump in New York for the closing arguments in a civil fraud trial. And on Saturday, he returns to Iowa for campaign rallies.
The former president is picking and choosing when and where he shows up. In every case, the decision is calculated to maximise his chances of winning back the White House – and staying out of prison.
He was not obliged to attend Tuesday’s proceedings at the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit. In driving rain, few protesters bothered to show up outside the courtroom and there were no TV cameras allowed inside. Trump sat there with no opportunity to speak as lawyers jousted over claims that he is immune from criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump’s lawyer, D John Sauer, told a three-judge panel that prosecuting former presidents “would open a Pandora’s box from which that nation may never recover”. He argued that presidents must first be impeached and removed from office by Congress before they can be prosecuted. Judge Florence Pan reacted sceptically, asking Sauer: “You’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could tell Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival?”
Trump will probably lose this argument. But the real point of his rare return to Washington came after the hearing, when he spoke to reporters at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, formerly the Trump International hotel, calling it “a very momentous day” and insisting that he “did nothing wrong”.
If the case is allowed to proceed, Trump claimed, that would potentially leave Biden open to prosecution once he left office. “When they talk about a threat to democracy, that’s your real threat to democracy,” he said. The remarks were transmitted live to the base on the conservative Fox News channel, guaranteeing more exposure than a typical rally.
Meanwhile Trump’s fundraising campaign had kicked into gear. Before the hearing, he released a video in which he said he might prosecute Biden if he defeats him in the presidential election. “If I don’t get immunity then crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get immunity. Joe would be ripe for indictment,” he said.
The campaign dates and court dates are now like two liquids mixed and impossible to separate. The trial in the federal election interference case is due to start on 4 March, one day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will hold primaries or caucuses.
The convergence has helped Trump break another American tradition. For half a century, Iowa has been a test of retail politics as diners, farms, hotel ballrooms, school gyms and a state fair play an outsized role in deciding who will become the most powerful person on the planet. The candidate with a winning smile and tireless handshake had a decent chance of working their way to the White House.
But data collected by the Des Moines Register newspaper shows that, between 1 January 2023 and 4 January 2024, Trump held only 24 events in 19 counties, far fewer than DeSantis (99 events in 57 counties), Haley (51 events in 30 counties) and Ramaswamy (239 events in 94 counties).
Yet a recent poll put Trump 34 percentage points clear of DeSantis in Iowa. His campaign surrogates such as Ben Carson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kristi Noem often draw bigger crowds in the state than actual candidates.
There are several reasons for Trump’s dominance but court appearances like Tuesday’s have not done him any harm. Any time his fortunes seemed in danger of flagging, for example after Republicans’ midterms flop, the justice department inadvertently gave him political rocket fuel. He played victim and martyr of a politicised system and Republicans – even his opponents – rallied around him.
That will not necessarily work against Biden in November. A CBS News poll found that 64% of Americans do not think Trump should be immune from prosecution for actions he took as president, whereas just 34% believe he should be. Other surveys suggest that a criminal conviction – he is facing 91 criminal charges in Atlanta, Miami, New York and Washington – could deal him a big blow among moderates and independents.
Two Republican candidates have been vocal in making that case. Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and federal prosecutor, and Asa Hutchinson, an ex-governor of Arkansas, have warned that Trump will be convicted and is unfit for office.
Last month a Reuters/ Ipsos poll put Trump’s support among Republicans at 61%. Christie? He was at 2%. And Hutchinson? He was at 1%.
