Georgia Arraignment Likely to Backfire if Trump Picks Strategic Day to Turn Himself In
In one unusual way, former President Donald Trump stands to benefit from his persecutors’ latest act of vengeance-inspired wrath.
On Monday, a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia indicted Trump and 18 others on charges related to the 2020 presidential election. The former president and his fellow defendants have until Aug. 25 to surrender.
Meanwhile, the first Republican presidential debate looms on Aug. 23. Fox News will broadcast the debate in Milwaukee.
It’s unlikely Trump will participate. He has said he won’t sign a required pledge to support whoever wins the GOP primary race, and he has little incentive to show up, given his big lead in the polls.
Tuesday on “CBS Mornings,” CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe noted an opportunity for Trump. The former president, O’Keefe suggested, could steal attention from his competitors by surrendering on Aug. 23.
“Where would you rather be that day, in Milwaukee with everybody else or in that Atlanta courtroom? He knows that this has completely sucked oxygen away from everybody else running,” O’Keefe said, according to CBS News.
“So now he can potentially use this to his advantage even more,” O’Keefe added.
There will be cameras in the courtroom in Georgia, reports @edokeefe, marking a significant difference from the previous arraignments of former Pres. Donald Trump.
“That has a huge effect on the public perception of all of this,” says O’Keefe. https://t.co/jYYgEuy23W pic.twitter.com/zaEE0NVKm6
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) August 15, 2023
The theory has merit, though not for the reason he implied.
If Trump chooses to surrender himself in Georgia on the day of the debate, he will do so not to distract attention from other Republican presidential candidates. After all, the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls shows the former president with a nearly 40-point lead over his closest challenger.
Instead, Trump has one good reason and one transcendent reason for surrendering himself on Aug. 23.
First, he has no cause to feel anything but contempt for executives at Fox News. If he can damage that moribund network by drawing viewers away from the Republican debate, he will.
Second — and far more important — he should appear in Georgia on Aug. 23 for posterity’s sake.
Our descendants, untainted by current passions, will marvel at the juxtaposition. One event, by its very name, exists to promote political debate. The other seeks to silence it.
Posterity should know that a criminal cartel indicted a former president for saying things with which cartel members disagreed. Future Americans might not read the indictment — who among us even now can bring themselves to read these farcical documents in their entirety? — but they should see the contrast on Aug. 23.
Indeed, we do not think enough about history. This statement, of course, has broader applications, but I mean it specifically with respect to this case.
No matter the day Trump chooses to surrender himself, it will mark his fourth arraignment since March 30.
Surely no one can treat any of this as normal.
But they do. The presidential debates continue as scheduled. O’Keefe offers his analysis on how a former president’s fourth indictment might affect a primary. It seems surreal.
However our descendants view these events, we may rest assured that they will not see them through the lens of polls and political strategy.
Instead, they will see that something in their ancestors’ world went very wrong.
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