August 04, 2023 12:03 PM UTC

Trump Legal Strategy is Bad News for Republicans Everywhere

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• by: Colorado Pols

Recent polling from Monmouth suggests that roughly 30% of Americans still believe that the 2020 Presidential Election was fraudulent in some manner. You can probably guess the political makeup of that 30% (it’s all MAGA, baby!) On the flip side, almost 60% of Americans believe that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump fair and square in 2020. As NBC News noted in late June, these numbers haven’t changed much since a poll conducted by Monmouth in November 2020.

The point here is that “2020 election fraud” is a narrative that is only interesting to the right-wing MAGA base. This is just one of many reasons that Republicans everywhere are nervous about the Trump legal strategy for overcoming his latest indictment related to efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election ( a case that historians say could be the most important in modern American history). As The Washington Post reports today:

Former president Donald Trump and some of his legal advisers see an upside to the latest criminal case against him: He can use his upcoming trial to further argue his false claims of a stolen 2020 election.

The looming courtroom showdown is poised to push his insistence that election fraud occurred in 2020 toward the center of the 2024 presidential campaign, a dismaying prospect for Republicans and some of Trump’s advisers who have urged him to stop belaboring that subject. Trump’s defense team has signaled that they’ll focus on rebutting prosecutors’ allegations that Trump knew his fraud claims were false…

…But the prospect of revisiting the validity of the last election has delighted Democrats, on top of causing consternation among Republican strategists, who see other, much more politically fruitful focal points for 2024. There are mountains of evidence — provided by top leaders in his campaign and government — that the election was not stolen from Trump, and the indictment paints a damning portrait of a man who was frequently informed of that reality. [Pols emphasis]

We’ve seen Republicans such as Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-ifle) making the argument that Trump’s latest indictment is actually a good thing for the Big Orange Guy because it allows him to potentially “uncover” some “proof” that the 2020 election was rigged against him. Perhaps the hope is that Trump can someday be retroactively named President, or something.

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”60%”]“If this is the conversation we’re going to have over the next year and a half, it’s going to be tough for Republicans, particularly in suburban areas.”

— Michael Duncan, Republican consultant aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.[/mantra-pullquote]

Yet these aren’t just the talking points of loyal Trump soldiers. Trump’s attorneys are going to have to go this route because their best chance at defending the former President involves their ability to prove that Trump really did think that he won the 2020 election. Back to to WaPo:

“We will re-litigate every single issue in the 2020 election in the context of this litigation,” Trump attorney John Lauro said Tuesday during an interview with Fox News. “It gives President Trump an opportunity that he has never had before, which is to have subpoena power since Jan. 6 in a way that can be exercised in federal court.”

Leaders in both parties agree that revisiting those topics hurt the GOP among moderates and swing voters in last year’s midterms and could continue to sandbag Trump and the rest of the ticket. [Pols emphasis]

Does Boebert understand this? If she did, would she care? These are probably questions without answers, but we know that she told Grant Stinchfield on his “Diet Fox News” show this week that voters across the country — and in her district — are laser-focused on the 2020 election:

“I go all throughout the United States, all throughout my district here in Colorado, where I am right now,” said Boebert. “And the number one thing that I still hear is ‘We need secure, fair elections.'”

Boebert said this to a MAGA audience, but we know from recent polling data that it just isn’t true in CO-03. Here’s what actual voters in Boebert’s district listed as their top issues in April 2023:

It is certainly possible that Boebert constituents occasionally ask her about election fraud, but there is no reality in which this issue is “the number one thing” that Boebert hears about on the campaign trail. To the extent that voters are bringing it up with elected officials anywhere, it’s a safe bet that these are largely conversations between MAGA supporters and MAGA politicians.

None of this makes any strategic sense for Republicans hoping for better results in 2024, but the GOP is still following Trump’s lead…and Trump is primarily concerned with keeping his ass out of prison and never admitting that he did, in fact, lose an election in 2020.

Voters are generally more interested in hearing what candidates are proposing for the future, as opposed to listening to their gripes about the recent past. If Republicans make 2024 about 2020, Democrats will be more than happy to let them talk.