What if Trump Had Delayed Declaring His Presidential Run?
This Strategy Could Have Worked for Him. Thankfully, It's Inconceivable He Would Have Tried It
Below is a summary of Trump’s strategy to thwart the criminal indictments and potential trials against him:
1) He declared his run for the Presidency especially early in order to make it as awkward as possible for law enforcement officials to press charges and inhibit the progress of criminal proceedings.
2) He is using any platform he possibly can (rallies, social media, television interviews) to intimidate and/or tamper with anyone involved in said criminal proceedings and generally turn the process into a clown show to sow confusion and repulsion for participation in such proceedings.
3) He wants to delay the trials as much as possible in the hopes that either he gets elected President, or a sympathetic candidate gets elected, to either pardon him and/or end any outstanding criminal proceedings against him.
But it looks like all 3 of these are not possible at the same time. It appears that #3 is mutually exclusive of both or either of the first two. To the extent that Trump is capable of formulating a coherent strategy, this 3-tiered strategy has probably significantly backfired on him.
One of the reasons is because the judiciary is not entirely made up of judges that are curiously sympathetic to him. There are a few out there, and Judge Cannon in Florida, who currently presides over the “Pilfered Documents” case against him, seems to be one of them. But most of the judges that will be confronted with these cases are not immune to the effects of current events and the political climate, even the ones that were appointed by him but still have an independent conscience.
There must be some awareness among most judges of other obvious factors permeating these cases, larger ones regarding the public interest and politics. They know that Presidential primaries are approaching, and that the general election is a bit more than a year from now. Who in their right mind, or in good conscience, would think it’s a good idea, or in the best interest of anyone, to delay after an election? They are going to understand that the only way this can play out is by resolving the cases as soon as humanly possible, so that most of the country has a chance to make their own analysis and decisions about whether they should vote for him or not.
Judges are humans that take into account the societal factors surrounding them. They generally don’t make “political” determinations in the cases before them. But they can and do consider the political calendar, or other external societal factors, and offer their opinions, whether explicitly (see Judge David Carter‘s statement that the former President “likely committed crimes”) or implicitly, such as in their sentencing judgements; some judges sentence Jan. 6 defendants to harsher sentences than others because of how they view the event has impacted our society.
Then you have Judge Chutkan’s statement at a recent hearing in the Jan 6 conspiracy indictment that if Trump kept making inflammatory statements, it would force her to consider speeding up the trial timeline seemingly in order to minimize the tainting of the jury pool and the effects of him tampering with witnesses. Her statement puts the “fire” in “backfire”. If she actually follows through on this in her trial timeline decision, then we’ll have a very speedy and efficient trial indeed, which is the exact opposite of Trump’s goals when making such inflammatory statements.
It makes one wonder that if Trump had just shut the hell up on social media and delayed announcing his candidacy, would that have helped his goal of delaying the trials until after the election? Perhaps it’s unlikely that all 4 upcoming trials (as of this writing, there is “only” 4, but there could be more in the future) would have been delayed until after the election, but would it have been impossible? I can imagine a world where no social media posts about how “deranged” a prosecutor is or how “sick” witnesses are, combined with no candidacy announcement, would have created a non-urgent situation with greatly minimized pressure. The unsettling feeling among prosecutors and the general public of a “make-or-break” deadline may not have been so explicit.
What if Trump had simply not yet announced he’s running for President? This could have worked to his advantage. It would have created suspense and tension that would have kept him in the news for no other reason than his non-decision would be weighing on everyone’s mind, and the press would surely be asking other candidates about their feelings of him running or not running. It would have confused and disoriented the other candidates. They all would have gotten in the race with their Trump talking points ready to go, whether it be in support or against his candidacy. But if he’s not an official candidate, would they have wanted to address him at all? It’s hard to say, but the point is that he would still likely have commanded attention; other candidates would have had to make messaging adjustments, and thus Trump would have appeared strong while the others would have seemed weak and awkward. Considering he currently is the frontrunner by a sizable margin after multiple indictments, and has been for a very long time, it’s reasonable to think he would have been the frontrunner even if he was not officially a candidate.
He probably could have staved off the Special Counsel appointment of Jack Smith for some time. After all, AG Garland cited the fact of his announced Presidential run as a reason for appointing the Special Counsel. Say what you will about the DOJ and their investigation, it did seem to be going slowly, and Smith has given the impression of speeding it up like a fighter jet. He could have kept a low-profile for several months and waited until the last possible reasonable moment to announce. Ron DeSantis announced his candidacy on May 24, 2023, about 5 months after Trump. I’m not a campaign logistics expert, but it does seem like one could enter the race in June or July and have a fighting shot at the nomination.
Trump is a unique figure in American politics. He has developed a die-hard voting bloc for himself already, and probably doesn’t really even need to campaign very much to achieve a significant portion of Republican Party votes. He has instant nationwide household name recognition, and about half of the party currently loves him and wants him as their nominee. By being lower key and keeping everyone in suspense on his Presidential intentions, his share of party support would probably have gotten higher, just from the anticipation alone. The way things are going now for him, his share is doomed to go lower and his chances of being the nominee are greatly diminished, because he’s on his way to being a convicted felon. Even if he’s not convicted on one single count, the fatigue of the ordeal will be overwhelming, even to Republicans.
Trump is probably incapable of such low-key behavior and is now obviously all-in on fomenting wide-spread violence in order to intimidate anyone and everyone into making each trial a complete shitshow, in order to delay them until after the election in the hopes that he gets elected or pardoned. So we’ll never know how an alternate approach would have worked. But it is an interesting thought experiment, that emphasizes the question of how much damage he could have done if he had been smarter and nuanced. Hopefully for all of us, future powerful demagogues will also be more like reality television stars than polished calculating politicians.