Donald Trump’s 2024 announcement may have felt like a flop, but there was an interesting upside to it for him.
Jose Pagliery, political investigations reporter at The Daily Beast, tells The New Abnormal host Andy Levy that one can’t look at this announcement “as anything other than an attempt to mar any prosecution as a political persecution of him.”
It “could be viewed as him trying to seek further cover so that if he does get indicted for one of the many things that he’s being investigated for right now, he could just say, ‘Oh, look at this, they just indicted me because I announced, they were just trying to stop me from winning for you in 2024.’”
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Pagliery explains that for the last two months Trump has been covered by the DOJ’s “60-day rule,” an unofficial practice “that says they’re not going to openly announce an investigation or indict somebody to avoid seeming as if they’re trying to meddle in elections.”
“Before that clock was up on Election Day, Trump telegraphed that he was going to announce. That plan was underway just before we realized that there was going to be a Georgia runoff, which essentially set that clock again.
“In the current time period, the DOJ would probably be breaking its own rules if it took any action on Trump, because he’s very much involved in that Georgia election. But once we get past Dec. 6, there’s nothing that stops the DOJ from making a move.
“You can either view this as a good-faith attempt by a man to go back into the White House or the final chapter of a desperate man who’s trying to do anything to not die in prison.”
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Also on the podcast, Jason Kander, former Missouri secretary of state and host of the podcast Majority 54, explains that Trump could be his own worst enemy by becoming overexposed in American culture.
“I mean, we get tired of people. Somehow The Rock has staying power playing the same guy in every movie. I don’t know how he does it. Good for him. It also explains why he also has a tequila line and is so active on Instagram and is always trying to do all this other stuff because he knows you gotta keep producing new stuff. You’ve gotta keep changing, you’ve gotta be interesting.
“Trump knows that too, but Trump’s way of doing it is he has to constantly top whatever crazy thing was said last. And his problem is the most crazy thing that was always most recently said was said by him. So he has to keep digging into the bone in order to come up with anything.”
Also on the podcast, Katherine Abughazaleh, who covers Tucker Carlson for Media Matters for America, describes how the Fox News host has been relatively quiet since Trump’s announcement.
“He’s [Carlson] been out until Wednesday. The only thing he mentioned was saying that ‘You might like Trump, you might not like Trump, but he deserves to be on Twitter.’ But he had no explicit endorsement of anyone.
“It’s super-weird. They’re all tripping over themselves. The überTrumpers don’t know what to do. Do they say that the GOP is split together? Do they side with Trump? Do they side with DeSantis? No one knows what to do. It’s chaos.”
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