Former President Donald Trump took time out to speak to the media late Thursday after his fourth arrest in a few months, this time in Fulton County, Ga., on racketeering charges related to efforts to contest the 2020 election results.
After he was released on a $200,000 bond, he said, “It’s a very sad day for America. This should never happen. If you challenge an election, you should be able to challenge an election.”
“I thought the election was a rigged election, a stolen election, and I should have every right to do that. As you know, you have many people that you’ve been watching over the years doing the same thing, whether it’s Hillary Clinton or Stacey Abrams or many others,” Trump continued.
“When you have that great freedom to challenge, you have to be able to. Otherwise, you can have very dishonest elections. What has taken place here is a travesty of justice. We did nothing wrong, I did nothing wrong, and everybody knows it,” he added.
“I’ve never had such support, and that goes with the other ones too. What they’re doing is election interference. They’re trying to interfere with an election. There’s never been anything like it in our country before. This is their way of campaigning, and this is one instance, but you have three other instances. It’s election interference,” he said.
“So I want to thank you for being here. We did nothing wrong at all, and we have every right, every single right to challenge an election that we think is dishonest, that we think is very dishonest. So thank you all very much and I’ll see you very soon,” Trump concluded.
The goal is to deny our party a viable presidential candidate.
We're not dealing with grandpappy's Democratic Party. We're dealing with Communists, pure and simple. Communists have taken over the Democrat Party.
Communists don't play games. They play for keeps.
— USA Features Media (@USAFeatures) August 25, 2023
Meanwhile, Trump’s mounting legal problems are not hurting his broad base of support among GOP voters, and in fact, they appear to be strengthening him, according to a new analysis of polling data.
Axios reported that, on the eve of the first GOP primary debate, none of Trump’s rivals have managed to catch on with the Republican base. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was within earshot of catching Trump earlier this year, according to polling data, has consistently lost ground over the past couple of months.
That’s not necessarily because of anything he’s done as much as it appears as though the more Trump gets indicted by Democratic prosecutors, the more sympathy he appears to be building. And that has only strengthened and grown his support over a total of 91 criminal counts.
“In Iowa, Trump enjoys a more than 20-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis among likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers, according to an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll released Monday,” Axios reported.
“The poll — conducted Aug. 13-17 — echoed a new CBS News/YouGov poll published Sunday, which showed 62% of likely GOP primary voters support Trump while 16% support DeSantis,” the outlet added, noting further that “77% of likely GOP primary voters believe Trump’s indictment in the Georgia case is politically motivated, according to the CBS News/YouGov, which was conducted Aug. 16-18.”
An NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll, meanwhile, found Trump beating DeSantis by 18 points, 38-20 percent. But after Trump’s Fulton County, Ga., indictment, his lead in that survey increased 43-18 percent.
Not surprisingly, there is a large partisan divide between American voters as to whether they believe Trump should be prosecuted. “85% of Republicans think Trump should not be prosecuted, while 95% of Democrats and 57% of Independents believe he should be, according to a national polling report from Quinnipiac University published last week but conducted before the Georgia indictment came down,” Axios reported.
The outlet also noted that several major Republican donors are still attempting to woo an alternative candidate to Trump to enter the 2024 primary, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has said he remains laser-focused on building Republican leads in statewide elections in November.
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