At a recent rally in Texas, Donald Trump talked about Hillary Clinton and how the 2020 election was allegedly stolen from her through voter fraud.
“The 2020 election was rigged and everybody knows it,” Trump said, even though all those claims have been widely debunked. The U.S. Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority thanks to judges put in office by Trump himself, has dismissed a lawsuit seeking to overturn election results in four battleground states.
If this rhetoric sounds familiar, it’s because the message at Trump rallies today consists of snippets he’s been using since he first ran for president, such as the hate rolls against Hillary Clinton, and the voter fraud conspiracy he’s focused on since his defeat in 2020.
“He’s doing what he’s always done: playing with his base and telling them what they want to hear,” said Brandon Conradis, a journalist with political news site The Hill and a former DW editor. “He keeps repeating his well-known sayings.”
Pardoning Capitol Attackers
Trump also released a new hit single, so to speak, during his rally in Conroe, Texas, last weekend. The former president spoke out more forcefully than ever in favor of the insurgents who stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
“If I run and if I win,” he said, referring to the 2024 presidential election, “we will treat those people fairly from January 6. We will treat them fairly. And if pardons are required, we will give them pardons because they are being treated very unfairly.”
“When Trump says provocative things like this, what he craves, above all, is attention,” Michael Cornfield, an associate professor of political management at George Washington University, told D.W.
In the violent attack on the Capitol, an enraged mob disrupted the session of Congress that was about to formalize Joe Biden’s election victory. Five people were killed and more than 700 have since been charged.
Reaction of Republican leaders
In the days since Conroe’s rally, numerous big-name Republicans have spoken out against Trump’s idea of pardoning those who stormed the Capitol. South Carolina Senator And well-known Trump ally Lindsey Graham said he hoped the perpetrators “would go to jail and experience the harshness of the law, because they deserve it.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu was also adamantly against the idea. “Of course not,” Sununu told CNN when asked if the Capitol attackers should be pardoned. “Oh my God. Nope.”
But high-profile Republicans, observers say, are not the target group of Trump’s controversial statements, anyway.
“Trump doesn’t care” about criticism from the upper echelons of his party, journalist Conradis told DW. “He’s appealing to his base, and those who stormed the Capitol are definitely part of it. Those are the staunchest supporters who are going to vote for him no matter what.”
Trump is a ‘showman’
Keeping his supporters close will be crucial if Trump decides to run again in the 2024 presidential election. Statements that begin with “If I run and if I win” certainly suggest that another Trump candidacy is a likely scenario.
“Obviously, anything could happen, but as things stand right now, he definitely wants to run again and he’s laying the groundwork,” Conradis said. “He doesn’t want people to forget about him. He loves stage lights, he’s a showman and he wants media coverage.”
Cornfield is less safe. “He is an actor with an important political position and a political past. But his political future is very much up in the air,” he said.
In any case, if Trump decides to run again, they would have a good chance. In a poll published by The Hill in late January, Trump won 57 percent of the vote in a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary, with 8 candidates, the first place by a wide margin. In second place, at 12 percent, is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Trump has also amassed an impressive war treasure. In the second half of 2021 alone, it raised $51 million, bringing its total funding to $122 million, according to federal records. Many of those dollars came from small-time donors, “normal Americans,” as Conradis put it. “That, in itself, shows the support he still has.”
Cornfield notes that Trump has only spent a portion of this money on backing candidates at the local and state level in the midterm elections being held this November. Normally, explains the professor of Political Science, someone who wants to run for president would spend much more that way. But he thinks Trump is saving the money for something else.
“He’s sunk up to his neck in lawsuits, and that could get worse,” Cornfield said. And a good legal defense is expensive.
“I could win again”
Of course, Trump could also hope not to have to face any judge at all if things go the way he wants. “I don’t want to be too cynical, but one of his main motivations for running again is that he will argue that because he is a candidate for president, he is immune from prosecution,” Cornfield said.
Whether that twist works is another story. For now, it’s unclear whether Trump will try to return to the White House. However, if it does, the Democrats would face a serious opponent. “Trump is still the same person elected in 2016,” Conradis said. “That’s why I could win again.”
