Stuck watching the Trump show

There is one thing about which both Donald Trump and his most vociferous critics are happy: the 2024 election is gearing up to be all about him.

The former president is hamming up his victim status on a score-settling vengeance tour that he hopes will propel him back to the White House. His huge poll lead suggests it is a winning strategy — at least in the Republican primary. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are vain enough to have persuaded themselves that their legal and electoral crusade against the former president amounts to the most important fight in the history of the Republic.

The team tasked with delivering Joe Biden a second term knows that their best chance of victory relies on demonizing Trump and minimizing the time spent talking about the unpopular and obviously declining octogenarian incumbent. They may believe what they tell the president to say about his predecessor’s threat to American democracy, but they are cynical enough nevertheless to hope that Trump wins his primary. Biden knows that his once and (probably) future opponent is the glue that holds together an otherwise unlikely Democratic coalition; he is banking that tens of millions of voters underwhelmed by a 2020 rematch will once again break his way. As he is fond of saying: “Compare me to the alternative, not the Almighty.” (Be careful what you wish for, Mr. President.)

Shortly before this magazine went to press, Trump was indicted for a third time. In this case, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, Trump stands accused of coordinating a criminal scheme to stay in power after his November 2020 election defeat. Trump’s calendar is becoming an ever-messier tangle of campaign stops, primaries and court appearances. (He has, since we went to press, been indicted a fourth time.) His lawyers have their work cut out, in a series of civil and criminal cases that pertain to everything from classified documents and porn-star hush money to rape allegations.

The most politically salient case, though, is the most recent to be brought, concerning Trump’s conduct and state of mind in the build-up to, and during, the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Did he know he’d lost the election — or was he deluded? An interesting question, but is it really one we want to spend an election year debating?

No one concerned about the health of American democracy should be blasé about the blurring of the line between the law and politics. In another paradoxical symmetry, pro- and anti-Trump hardliners will see anything but their preferred outcome in these cases as evidence of a completely broken system of government. The American system is set to be tested and, whatever happens, one side will judge that it has failed.

So far, though, most Americans appear reassuringly level-headed about the explosive combination of presidential politics and criminal law. Outside the partisan bubbles, the country seems to understand that they are not watching a black-and-white morality play. That neither the Bidens nor the Trumps scream squeaky-clean probity. And that no one should be above the law, but that the prosecution by the Justice Department of the president’s biggest political rival is nonetheless a troubling state of affairs.

Surveying the political landscape ahead of an election that will be dominated by legal drama, Americans can’t decide if they are outraged or bored. Columnists and talking heads intone about the unprecedented, grave nature of the former president’s predicament. They may be right — but the country doesn’t seem especially interested. None of the arraignments of the man Trump describes as “your favorite president” have triggered the scale of protest or disruption that many, not least Trump, predicted. Thankfully, the barricades erected for each of his arraignments have proven unnecessary.

There is little point in speculating much further about the concrete political consequences of Trump’s many legal problems. For now, only one thing is certain: Trump is still center stage in the drama of American public life. As long as he is there, many on the right will back him over what they see as a corrupt and hypocritical elite out to get him. And the establishment will use Trump’s alleged criminality as the latest excuse to ignore the disappointments and divides that led to his rise.

Whatever happens next, America’s political class is likely to zoom in on the minutiae of the Trump cases and miss the big picture. From an era-defining competition with China to ballooning public debt, there is no shortage of important issues to talk about. Instead, it looks like we will all be watching another season of The Donald Trump Show. That suits Trump insofar as it keeps him in the spotlight. It suits Biden because the less the country is talking about his record in office and own personal shortcomings, the better his chances of reelection. But what’s good for Trump and Biden isn’t good for America.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 2023 World edition.