Chuck Todd on Sunday voiced what many have wondered about Donald Trump since his 2016 campaign: Is there a tangible amount of red flags associated with him that would sway them away from giving him their vote?
“[Trump] is so consistent in some ways in that you can’t help but wonder, is it why it’s been able to blunt the impact so far,” NBC’s political director and moderator of “Meet the Press” said on “Today” Sunday morning. “Now, that said…it’s one thing to sort of survive what he’s dealing with in the two New York courtrooms…when you throw in Fulton County, if you throw in the federal government and the classified documents, there is a point where you have to ask, you know, ‘How much is too much?’”
The question is being put to the test as of late. Just in the past month, Trump has been indicted in New York for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels, sued in civil court for defamation and battery by author E. Jean Carroll, and his former Vice President Mike Pence testified before a grand jury that is investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
And yet, his polling numbers for the 2024 Republican primary are trending upward.
An Emerson College poll taken April 25 showed Trump beating primary opponent Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by 45 percentage points, according to the poll-tracking site FiveThirtyEight. A week prior, a YouGov poll had Trump leading by just 22 points.
Todd theorized that because Trump has been in some form of legal or political trouble for much of his career, his supporters have been conditioned to be somewhat numb to these new issues.
“In many ways, because [Trump] has been fighting lawsuits, really, his entire professional life,” Todd said, “and he’s always tried to talk about them [as] some sort of personal attack or nuisance…in many ways he’s been conditioning, and some might call it gaslighting, his supporters for years. [He] essentially says any legal attack on him is really politically motivated.”
There might be more legal trouble on the way for the former president. A Georgia district attorney said Monday she aims to announce this summer whether she’ll bring charges against Trump for his alleged attempts to overturn the presidential election in Georgia, according to CNN.
