With the most recent arrest of former President Donald Trump, there is a question as to what degree the charges against Trump in Georgia will impact the upcoming election in 2024, more specifically, how the mug shot will impact Trump’s base and the electorate at large.
When it comes to issues of legal action against political figures, there are always concerns about the influence of partisan reactions. How the public will react within their respective political outlooks and factions is an unavoidable issue.
For some, this division is reason enough to have avoided the mugshot entirely as the other three prosecutors did when Trump surrendered to their custody. To many, it would be dangerous to give Trump and his Republicans a rallying cry via his mugshot, with the idea that it could be used to symbolize the abuse of the law.
However, as I argued before, the law must supersede political concerns to apply justice consistently. There can be no stable legal system if the law makes exceptions to the law for the sake of convenience.
As I explained in a previous article:
What matters here is not merely the political response by Trump but how the law has finally, after seven years of absurd conduct by Trump, decided that it has reason to bring the hammer down on Trump. For once, politics is secondary. Trump’s gross disregard has thoroughly damaged the law, and it is high time that its ability to hold him accountable is demonstrated.
Though largely symbolic, mugshots are illustrative of the equal application of the law. Merely because it may be controversial is not reason enough to prevent Trump or any other political figure from being arrested from going through standard procedure.
But even if we were to accept the premise that the political side of the mugshot mattered, there is evidence to suggest that a mugshot and, indeed, even the indictments against Trump might hurt him, not increasing his support among the general public.
A recent Politico Magazine/ISPOS poll of 1,032 found that nearly half of the country believes that Trump is guilty of the charges against him, and even more want the trials to take place before the 2024 election. Half of Americans even go beyond that, arguing that Trump should go to jail if convicted.
Such negativity towards Trump’s current legal problems, though not explicitly about the mugshot, would suggest that, at the very least, the public is inclined to view Trump’s legal issues with a negative view of his conduct rather than that an example of DOJ misconduct.
While Trump’s base may attempt to use this as a means to rally around their candidate, the fact that independents and Democrats manage to make up enough of the population to, within the last month, create a wing of Americans that support the indictments suggests that Trump may not be able to expand beyond where he currently is politically. And more likely than that, the indictments may even prevent him from winning in 2024.
As the cases proceed, the conditions may change, but so long as they remain the way they are now, it is unlikely that Trump will be able to use the court of public opinion against prosecutors.