Former President Donald Trump was arrested again today. And once again, his propaganda machine has gone into overdrive to discredit the charges and claim that there is no substance to them; in Trump’s typical hyperbole, it’s “the biggest witch hunt in all of history.” The man is innocent of any misdeed.
Truly, when in 2016 he declared during his campaign, “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Ave. in full daylight and I wouldn’t lose any voters” he knew his tribe. And as they have proven many times since then, he was right.
The list of ongoing investigations involving Trump is as long as your arm. He has already been convicted once; back in March he was convicted by the Manhattan district attorney on state charges related to hush-money payments to the former adult-film star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
Jack Smith is also overseeing other investigations related to Trump, including those regarding the January 6, 2021, insurrection and the 2020 election in Georgia. He may yet be charged for both those.
If you’re not a MAGA stalwart, you can only shake your head at the lengths his rabid supporters–politicians and the public alike–will go to defend his behavior.
Today offered plenty of opportunity for reactions from top GOP politicians. Speaker Kevin McCarthy claimed a bathroom was far safer than a garage, where some classified documents were found at President Biden’s home in Delaware.
“I don’t know,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters Monday when asked whether it was a “good look” for Mr. Trump to have kept sensitive documents stored in his bathroom. “Is it a good picture to have boxes in a garage that opens up all the time?”
Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, also defended the bathroom storage strategy, suggesting that the facilities, such as they were, were plenty secure. “There are 33 bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago,” Mr. Donalds said on CNN Tuesday morning. “So don’t act like it’s just in some random bathroom that the guests can go into. That’s not true.”
The bathroom photo wasn’t the only one that Republicans sought to dismiss. They also said they had no concerns with photographs released by law enforcement that showed documents strewn across a carpet at Mar-a-Lago.
Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader, said the Justice Department was using photographs to stoke outrage about the case. “Look at some of the photos that were being sensationally shown over the weekend,” he said. “It was newspaper clippings and some personal items.”
The New York Times corrects Mr. Scalise: “the spilled contents of the boxes included a document intended only for certain intelligence agencies.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in recent times had cooled on perpetually defending the indefensible conduct of the former president, today declined to address his indictment, and whether he would support Trump should he become the Republican nominee. Mitch is once more dancing on the tightrope.
“Look, the Republican campaign for the nomination already been going on for six months. It’s going be going on for a year longer. And I’m just simply not going to comment on the candidate,” he said to CNN’s Manu Raju. “We’ve got a bunch of them, and I’m just simply going to stay out of it.”
A few of the GOP politicians are inclined to be more reasonable. Congressman Tim Burchett, a staunchly conservative Republican from Tennessee, is one of those Republican officials to say he would not support Trump’s presidential candidacy if he were convicted of a crime. 
“I’d just have to read the conviction, but no, honestly, on the surface, I wouldn’t. That doesn’t look good,” he said when asked by CNN’s Manu Raju if he’d be OK supporting Trump as the Republican presidential nominee if he were a convicted felon. “I would like to find out all the truth, but obviously if that’s the truth, I’d be very concerned,” Burchett said.
In the meantime, Donald Trump is doing what he does best: strategize to monetize his MAGA base support—and that means to get them to open their wallets and make donations to his election campaign.
Apparently, the Trump election machine was all ready, and the first signs are emerging of a paid messaging campaign from Trump and his allies as they push back on his federal indictment. They have two goals: deflect and donate.
A broadcast ad released on Monday by MAGA Inc., a super PAC run by allies of the former president, astutely does not directly mention the federal indictment against Mr. Trump, but instead focuses on allegations that President Biden also mishandled classified documents. (Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden has complied with investigators and there was no intentionality in retaining the documents.) The ad tries to portray the case against him as a political maneuver.
“But they didn’t indict Biden,” a narrator says with an inflection of anger. “Instead, Biden’s D.O.J. went after Trump.”
The first indictment-related ad that came directly from the Trump campaign was a request for money. On Friday, the day the indictment was unsealed, the Trump campaign placed an ad on Facebook that repeated many of his claims about a “witch hunt” and “election interference.” At the end, it made a plea: “Contribute to peacefully stand with me today.”
In 2016, ironically, one of Trump’s fixed ideas was the protection of classified documents, and in countless stump speeches he declared, “In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.” Now he finds that he is indeed on the other side of that law.
