Senate Republicans say former President Trump’s growing legal problems are unlikely to affect his march to the GOP nomination, though they fear the jury verdict finding him liable for sexual abuse could be a serious obstacle to retaking the White House.
A New York jury’s finding that Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s is more serious and potentially more damaging to his standing with swing voters than the former president’s legal battle with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, they said.
But even Trump’s most vocal GOP critics predict it won’t injure him seriously with Republican primary voters, who have stood by Trump through many storms of criticism and controversy.
“I don’t know that it changes his lead in the polls. I think that’s unlikely,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said of last week’s verdict. “I think he’ll continue to lead in the Republican primary polls.
“I’ve been predicting that he will the nominee for a long time. I continue to predict that,” he added.
Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who has criticized Trump at times, also said the $5 million verdict against the former president for sexual abuse and defamation won’t make much difference to Republican primary voters.
“I think people’s views of him — particularly among his hardcore supporters — are baked in,” he said.
But Thune warned that a jury verdict finding Trump liable of sexual abuse could further deteriorate his standing with swing voters.
“From a short-term perspective, maybe it works for him. But in the end, to win a general election, you got to win the voters in the middle. And I think that kind of rhetoric makes that more challenging,” he said.
Trump showed no hint of contrition after the jury announced its verdict, instead mocking Carroll at a CNN town hall the next day in New Hampshire.
Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about voters who think the verdict should disqualify him from serving another term as president, Trump quipped: “Well, there weren’t too many of them because my poll numbers came out. They went up, OK?”
Trump leads his nearest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), by an average of 34 points, according to an analysis of recent national polls by RealClearPolitics.com.
An I&I/TIPP poll of 469 Republicans and lean-Republicans conducted from May 3-5 found Trump had 55 percent support, while DeSantis had 17 percent support.
The poll showed Trump stronger than in April, when he had 47 percent support and DeSantis had 23 percent.
A National Research Inc. survey of 500 likely Republican voters in Iowa, which will host the first contest of the 2024 GOP presidential primary, found Trump beating DeSantis by 18 points — 44 percent to 26 percent — in a hypothetical matchup. The poll was commissioned by the Center for American Greatness.
DeSantis, who is expected to formally launch his presidential campaign in the next few weeks, traveled to Iowa this past weekend and has aggressively courted support from Republican officials in the state.
Yet Trump is beating DeSantis even in Florida. Another National Research Inc. poll commissioned by the Center for American Greatness found Trump leading by 8 percentage points, 42 percent to 36 percent, in the Sunshine State
An Emerson College poll conducted in mid-March found Trump ahead of DeSantis by only 3 percentage points among Florida Republican primary voters.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who says he is looking for someone other than Trump to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2024, agrees with Senate GOP colleagues who don’t think Trump being found liable of sexual abuse is going to change the race.
“A lot of it has been baked in,” he said.
Rounds said, however, that he viewed the jury verdict as more serious than Bragg’s indictment on Trump for falsifying New York business records, which “the vast majority of us saw as an inappropriate thing with very little substance.”
“Republicans who may very well disagree with the former president saw the substance of [Bragg’s] prosecution as being inappropriate or untimely,” he said.
Rounds said the CNN town hall showed “the former president can still command an audience, and at the same time, there are a lot of Republican and probably independents that agree” with Trump on “policy substance.”
“He spoke very clearly about the problems with inflation and he’s right that under previous administrations, we had a lot better economy going forward with regard to inflation,” he added.
“Title 42 and the issues on the border clearly work in his favor. I thought he was in command of a lot of the stuff there.”
Rounds voiced the same concerns as his colleagues about Trump’s viability in another general election matchup with Biden.
“It’s one thing to win the nomination, it’s another thing to win the general election. There are a lot of us that are still interested in nominating someone who can win the general election,” he said. “I think that’s going to happen. I think we’re going to have some people in the party come forward who can win in a general election who can also win the Republican primary.”
DeSantis tried to take advantage of fears that Trump can’t beat Biden during a weekend trip to Iowa, where he pledged to have a solution to what he called the Republican Party’s losing streak in 2020 and 2022.
“We must reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years. The time for excuses is over,” DeSantis said, alluding to Trump’s unceasing complaints about the outcome of the last presidential election.
“If we get distracted, if we focus the election on the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again,” he said. The Memo: Nonexistent ‘border surge’ scrambles immigration politics Five things to know about where debt ceiling talks stand
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who was one of two GOP senators to attend a DeSantis meet-and-greet event in Washington last month, said there’s still enough time for the Florida governor to stage a comeback.
“I think it’s going to have to be a state-by-state race, and it sounds to me like there’s going to be multiple candidates, including DeSantis,” he said. “I don’t think most people are focused on the presidential race in 2024 yet.”
Asked about Trump’s dominance in the polls despite his legal problems, Cornyn said: “Maybe it’s because he gets all the free media coverage. It’s hard to compete with that.”
