Trump Offers a Masterclass in Seizing the Narrative

President Trump has been playing the national press like a violin, forcing national Republicans and reporters to respond to him, and those who have been paying close attention saw it coming from a mile away.A professor of political science at Marquette University, Julia Azari, wrote in a post-midterm election piece for the Mischiefs of Faction that Mr. Trump remained outside the GOP establishment and would continue to set “the terms of debate.”Ms. Azari said that “by constantly doing weird and objectionable things … Trump exerts control over the GOP and its agenda by forcing them to respond to him.”“Prominent Republicans are constantly in a position to have to respond,” Ms. Azari wrote. “While it’s been successful at crowding out other figures and perspectives, and thus setting the agenda, it’s possible that Republicans who haven’t relished this experience will have some incentive to coordinate against it.”This past week has been nothing if not an affirmation of this pattern. On March 18, Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would be arrested on Tuesday, saying he had learned of the plan from “Illegal leaks from a corrupt and highly political Manhattan district attorney’s office.”Since then, the former president has been the subject of a nonstop press frenzy picking apart every detail of the possible indictment, and rampant speculation over what an indictment might mean.In terms of the Republican response, things appear to be going Mr. Trump’s way, according to a professor of political science at John Jay College, Brian Arbour.“From a political standpoint this has been an effective week for Trump and he’s again sort of bent the Republican Party — broadly speaking — to him,” Mr. Arbour told the Sun over the phone. “I don’t know how many other times this has happened.”In the polls, Mr. Trump has had a great week. A poll from Monmouth University — a credible pollster — found this week that the GOP 2024 primary polls had swung 14 points in Mr. Trump’s favor since last month.The poll was conducted between March 16 and March 20, which means Mr. Trump’s post appears halfway through the survey. The poll found that Mr. Trump now leads Governor DeSantis 47 percent to 46 percent in a hypothetical GOP primary.Last month, the same pollster found that Mr. DeSantis was leading Mr. Trump in a head-to-head matchup, 52 percent to 40 percent, before he even officially announced his candidacy.“The movement Trump created is sticking by their standard-bearer,” the Monmouth University Polling Institute director, Patrick Murray, said. “That’s enough for Trump to overcome weaker support among the less MAGA portion of the Republican electorate, at least for now.”An associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Miles Coleman, told the Sun that “the fact that Trump’s polling rebounded despite nothing actually happening speaks to his skills at media relations.”“Since he launched his campaign, there’s been chatter that Trump is ‘rusty’ or maybe is ‘losing his touch,’” Mr. Coleman said. “But I think this episode proves that few people can create — and even control — news cycles like he can.”Mr. Coleman added: “He also got somewhat of an unforced error out of DeSantis, who mostly avoided weighing in on it, but still seemed to be talking derisively about Trump at his press conference.”Days after Mr. Trump’s announcement on Truth Social, Mr. DeSantis said that he didn’t “know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair.”To the “Trump faithful,” Mr. Coleman reckoned, Mr. DeSantis’s response was appearing to “side with Democrats,” while other Republicans rallied around the former president.Mr. Trump explained his thoughts on the situation in a Truth Social post Thursday, saying now “that Ron DeSanctimonious is finally admitting he’s in the Race by beginning to fight back, and now that his Polls have crashed so he has no other choice.”Mr. Arbour told the Sun that he expects Mr. DeSantis to bounce back from this past week, comparing his current “shakiness” to President Obama’s candidacy in 2007, and saying “we could forget this.”With that being said, the dynamic demonstrated this week could prove to be a problem for Mr. DeSantis and his expected campaign going forward, as he will undoubtedly be asked to respond to Mr. Trump’s personal drama.“It’s not very likely we’ll see anything permanent,” Mr. Arbour said. “My guess is that we probably won’t remember this week a year from now but it’s always hard to figure out what the pivotal moments are when they happen.”In terms of national attention, Mr. Trump is more relevant than he’s been in months and not for no reason. An indictment of a former president would be historic.A survey of America’s major newspapers shows that coverage of the issue has been a top priority, with both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal publishing stories on the topic every day this week.Mr. Trump is the one who set off this press frenzy, not the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and there are some reasons to believe that this case might have panned out to be nothing if left alone.For one, a former Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, dropped the hush money case before it rose to the level of an indictment and the star witness, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to committing perjury in the past.In the political world, the Senate majority leader, Charles Schumer, declined Wednesday to say whether he had confidence in the Manhattan district attorney. That seemed to suggest an indictment wasn’t a sure thing.“Look, the bottom line is — as I said — it’s premature to comment on what’s happening, and we’ll have to wait and see what he does,” Mr. Schumer mumbled.In terms of the effect of a potential indictment, Sabato’s Crystal Ball’s Mr. Coleman said he thinks Mr. Trump mostly stands to gain from it, at least in the primary.“I’ll also say that the ‘martyr’ effect is real in politics,” Mr. Coleman said. “Trump’s gains in the polls suggest to me that he’s getting a rally around the flag boost from Republicans — if he’s actually arrested or charged, I can see that helping his numbers even more.”

Trump Offers a Masterclass in Seizing the Narrative

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