‘Now he’s seen as a symbol’: Republicans rally around Trump
Republicans embraced Trump as both parties — and pollsters — tried to gauge the impact of the verdict on the election.
6/1/2024
PEORIA, Illinois — House Speaker Mike Johnson intensified his defense of Donald Trump before headlining a party fundraiser in Illinois on Saturday, as even this deep blue state’s Republicans seized on a Manhattan jury’s guilty verdict as a rallying cry for the former president.
“Terrible,” Frank Hernandez, a retiree from Caterpillar, said of the verdict while waiting for Johnson to speak at the dinner. “The prosecutors, the judge, Biden — they were all in cahoots.”
Johnson, who like many one-time critics of Trump has long since come to his defense — and who said immediately after the verdict in Trump’s hush money case that the Supreme Court should “step in” — told reporters here Saturday that if he was Trump’s attorney, “I think I would make an appeal to the Supreme Court.”
And after an army of online donors poured a staggering $53 million into Trump’s presidential campaign, Johnson said it wasn’t just Trump raising money off the verdict.
House Republicans, too, he said, had a “record fundraising day in the first 24 hours after that verdict,” though he did not provide a figure.
Trump, Johnson said, “is not just our nominee, not just an individual running for president. I think now he’s seen as a symbol, a symbol of one who is willing to fight back against that corruption, the deep state and all the rest.”
The full effect of the verdict on the presidential campaign may not be clear for months. Both parties were scrambling Saturday to gain a better read on the electorate, while pollsters were rushing to conduct fast — and, for that reason and others — likely unreliable polls.
Those surveys immediately following the verdict suggested it could become a drag on Trump’s White House bid. In a Morning Consult poll, 12 percent of self-reported 2020 Trump voters think he should end his campaign, while a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 10 percent of Republicans — and 25 percent of independents — say they are less likely to vote for Trump following his conviction.
On top of that, it’s possible that Trump could be imprisoned, though he could also be spared at next month’s sentencing with a lighter sentence. It was a Democratic prosecutor in New York, not the White House, who brought the case against Trump.
And Trump already had significant obstacles to unifying the party, after many moderates defected from him in 2020 and again in the GOP primaries earlier this year. In Illinois, Nikki Haley still got more than 14 percent of the vote in the GOP primary — and that was nearly two weeks after she dropped out of the race.
But in that same Reuters/Ipsos poll, more than one-third of Republicans said they were morelikely to vote for Trump following his felony conviction. And among the GOP grassroots, the trial — and the verdict — is serving as a call to arms.
“He’s a fucking criminal,” said former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh, who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020. “But he will not pay a price for this. In fact, this one will help him. This verdict is going to completely help him.” (Walsh is from IL every politician there is a criminal)
In a “MAGA Trump party,” he said, it’s possible the verdict “has only unified the party even more.”
That’s the current consensus among Trump loyalists. Rhonda Belford, an Illinois Republican state central committee member, pointed to Trump’s post-verdict fundraising haul, saying “it’s blowing up like a big cigar on the Democrats, honestly,” while Jeanne Ives, a former Republican state lawmaker, said, “You’re not going to see those ‘Republicans for Biden’ signs in front yards. That’s going away.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/01/republicans-rally-around-trump-while-dems-chant-lock-him-up-00161154