Despite the lackluster campaign and the prospect of further criminal charges, former US President Donald Trump remains in a strong position to be a candidate next year, and the case is unlikely to change the money paid to the actress.
Not even a conviction or jail sentence can prevent a U.S. citizen from running for president, but there is one exception: the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits anyone who has previously taken an oath of office again if they "participate in an insurrection" against the United States.
What Trump fears most
That means that what Trump and his campaign fear most is the special prosecutor's investigation into his conviction on January 2021, <>, and whether he will ask the jury to rule on the only charge that the Constitution says is ineligible for re-election.
Charter said Trump showed a pessimistic but defiant reaction when he became the first former president to be indicted in U.S. history, when he recently spoke at the Mar-A-Lago Hall, where he launched his re-election campaign five months ago.
He added that historical events have affected Trump's energy, but not his intense sense of indignation when he attacked his critics during the greatest blows of any rally he held.
Republican unity and state polarization
He added that the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg united the Republican Party and deepened the sense of a polarized country: Every challenger to Trump in the Republican nomination attacked the attorney general, and even figures who did not like Trump, such as Mitt Romney, joined in doing so.
Charter said photos of Trump in court were likely to further entrench sentiment for and opposition to his return as president, but the case has drawn the party toward Trump, not away from him.
Trump is back from the dead
The polls over the weekend put Trump in a strong competition with President Joe Biden, with Trump getting 41%, Biden 42%, and Biden's (80-year-old) popularity is still declining due to inflation, a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, his old age, and rising interest rates.
He has come back several times as a politician, and some American voters seem willing to turn a blind eye to behavior that would weaken candidates in other democracies.
Charter quoted Craig Kechichian, a Republican and pollster who worked in the Reagan administration, as saying, "There is a link between Americans being bullied by the government and rising popularity."