The face is tilted forward, gaze fixed on the lens, eyebrows furrowed and lips tight. Donald Trump left nothing to chance when he was photographed in an Atlanta prison on Thursday with a threatening “mug shot” that Stanley Kubrick would not have denied. An instant classic, this first mug shot of a former US president is obviously making global headlines, and one day it will find a place in the history books. But if Donald Trump could take advantage of it in the short term – to raise funds and eclipse his opponents in the Republican primary – the image and the multiple trials next year risk repelling certain independent voters in the “swing states” ( undecided states) and the suburbs. Where Trump had already lost the 2020 ballot.
From suspect to persecuted victim
Fundraising, media omnipresence, return to Twitter… Donald Trump, champion of political marketing, is trying to capitalize as much as possible on this usually infamous moment. If he is technically a quadruple indicted suspect, who is accused in Georgia of having tried to overturn the verdict of the polls with the help of 18 accomplices, Donald Trump seeks to reverse the roles. He presents himself as a victim of “political persecution” by the Biden administration, which he says is trying to eliminate a political opponent in the middle of the campaign for the 2024 election.
Less than an hour after his whirlwind stint in prison, his campaign sent the first salvos to raise funds from his supporters, with an email “BREAKING NEWS: THE MUG SHOT IS THERE”. “The Deep State is trying to make President Trump public enemy number one for daring to challenge the corrupt ruling class in Washington” with a photo “that presents him as a criminal in the eyes of the whole world”, writes the Trump team. Promising a t-shirt with the printed photo and the message “NEVER SURRENDER!” (Never Surrender) for a $47 donation.
Posters, t-shirts, mugs… The photo is everywhere on the official campaign store, almost relegating the famous red “Make America Great Again” cap to the second page. Donald Trump also took the opportunity to make his comeback on X / Twitter, two and a half years after the assault on the Capitol.
Competitors not necessarily eclipsed
Chance of the calendar, the brief arrest of Donald Trump, who emerged free against the payment of a bond of 200,000 dollars, took place the day after the first debate of the Republican primary. An important meeting on Fox News that Trump had decided to boycott, believing he had no interest in taking blows with more than 40 points ahead of his pursuers. He preferred to troll Rupert Murdoch by giving an interview on X to Tucker Carlson, ex-star host of Fox sacked in the spring.
A winning bet… at first glance. Absent Trump has been ubiquitous, with candidates twisting and turning to criticize him without alienating his base or really managing to explain why they represented a better alternative. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the only one to have attempted a frontal attack, suffered boos from the public.
In the end, six out of eight ended up raising their arms to say that they would support Donald Trump if he were invested by the party, even in the event of a criminal conviction. Including Mike Pence, although he assured that the ex-president had asked him to “put it before the Constitution” on January 6, 2021, insisting that he reject the results in Congress.
Hot, the consensus was as follows: Nikki Haley scored points by destroying the surprise Vivek Ramaswamy (“You have no experience in foreign policy, and it shows”) and Ron DeSantis, rigid and robotic as usual , played it too much safe. But the governor of Florida nevertheless progresses from 14 to 21% of voting intentions in Iowa, where the first ballot of the primary will be held in early 2024, and Haley goes from 3 to 11%. Donald Trump, he fell by one point, to 41%, according to a poll carried out for Fox News the day after the debate. That’s the risk for Trump: every day he’s in court is one less day campaigning. And that could particularly count in Iowa, a rural state that favors local candidates.
Independents as justice of the peace in a Trump-Biden duel
Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in 2020 for a simple reason: he did better than Hillary Clinton among independents, those non-party voters who represent between a quarter and a small third of the population. Joe Biden has superformed in the suburbsthese wealthy predominantly white suburbs, which enabled him to win in the four tightest “swing states” (undecided states): Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, with differences ranging from 11,000 to 75,000 votes.
What impact will Donald Trump’s indictments and upcoming trials have on independent voters? We ignore it. On the one hand, Biden remains an unpopular president, and centrists may sanction him because of inflation. On the other hand, these voters prefer to be told about the substantive problems than about the imaginary fraud of 2020 – the “MAGA” candidates were moreover sanctioned during the Midterms last November.
A marquette university survey however, gives an indication: between May and August, a period over which Donald Trump was indicted three times, he fell by 5 points (from 51% to 46%) among the independents, while Joe Biden progressed by the same amount (from 48% at 53%). If this trend is confirmed, especially with a trial in Georgia which should be broadcast by television, the electoral map could become very complicated for Donald Trump.