Bad News for Dems: New Numbers Show Trump Indictment Routine Is Losing Its Impact
Well, here’s a shocker: The prosecutors crying wolf on former President Donald Trump are drawing diminishing returns from their indictments.
That’s not just idle speculation, mind you. According to Axios — hardly a hub for Trump-loving conservatives — TV ratings and social media trends around Trump’s numerous (and mostly specious) indictments peaked when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged him with hush money violations in April.
Since then, each successive dopamine hit for the left has garnered lower ratings and fewer impressions. Quelle surprise.
As the Tuesday Axios report noted, “Americans have turned to Google in droves to find information about Trump and the topic of ‘indictment’ with every new case.”
Thus, in August of 2022, when the FBI raided Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, searches for Trump spiked. The searches hit their highest level when Bragg’s indictment came down in April — and indictment started trending, as well.
Trump’s June indictment for classified documents generated significantly lower numbers for both “Trump” and “indictment.” The Aug. 1 indictment for purported crimes related to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion were slightly lower:
Trump’s legal drama loses shock value https://t.co/RWQSQhlV9E
— Axios (@axios) August 8, 2023
Social media engagement tracking firm NewsWhip also reported that engagements on platforms like Twitter and Facebook were similar to the the Google trends.
The same went for cable news ratings, Axios reported.
“On TV, coverage of Trump’s first indictment in April drew a huge spike in viewership, according to Nielsen ratings,” the outlet reported.
“Subsequent indictments have drawn fewer viewers, although last week’s coverage of Trump’s third indictment and arrest drew roughly the same level of viewership as the second indictment in June.”
In the understatement of the week, Axios reported that these indictments “are starting to feel routine, experts say.”
But, of course, the alleged “experts” are blaming conservatives. Again, quelle surprise.
“The bombast and howling accusations after each charge, the lurid threats and endless victimologies, the mind numbing repetition of it all … is supposed to do just that: numb the mind so that sense making feels impossible and paying attention seems pointless,” said Jay Rosen, a New York University professor.
“There’s a name for it: flooding the zone with crap. It’s supposed to exhaust whatever interest we once had in following the news.”
If “flooding the zone with crap” is indeed the problem, I have an easy fix for the “experts”: Stop indicting Trump.
Of the three cases currently filed against the president, only one seems to pose a genuine threat to the 2024 GOP presidential front-runner. That would be the classified documents case — which, from the look of Jack Smith’s indictment, may be more complicated than Trump’s supporters might care to admit.
However, even in that case, there’s an issue inasmuch as materially similar classified document cases against figures like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Mike Pence have ended without any charges being filed.
Bragg’s hush-money indictments are ostensibly jokes designed to raise the progressive DA’s profile nationally. It worked for a few minutes until legal experts began noticing that the case had serious deficiencies — particularly in relation to the statute of limitations.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 indictment, meanwhile, seems to verge, in its present form, on criminalizing speech protected by the First Amendment. And, as for the potential indictment in Fulton County, Georgia over then-President Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — well, another day, another charge. What else is new?
According to the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate, Trump is getting 53.7 percent of prospective GOP primary voters — 38 points up on his closest rival. Not only that, but he’s running neck-and-neck with President Joe Biden in a potential 2020 electoral rematch.
Voters, in other words, are more concerned about the issues, not about show indictments that veer dangerously close to banana republic territory. With each successive round of charges, with every flood of “the zone” with more legal effluence, Americans gradually lose interest.
We’re inured to prosecutors calling wolf now. That’s not just a lone conservative speaking, mind you. The numbers don’t lie — and they don’t look good for Democrats leaning on court case after court case to damage the former president’s chances as he seeks to reclaim the Oval Office.
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