OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Biden administration’s ongoing prosecution of former President Donald Trump is turning him into the ‘Nelson Mandela of America’ — a wrongly persecuted martyr of monumental proportions that could propel him back into the White House, according to a pollster.
“Nearly 7 in 10 voters, or 69%, believe that politics ‘has played’ a role in the four indictments against Trump, according to a new survey shared with Secrets,” the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard wrote last week.
He added: “Voters are angered at what they see as Democratic strong-arm tactics to take out America’s most popular politician with legal and political tactics and believe that President Joe Biden and his Justice Department are behind it.”
Additionally, 58 percent of respondents said they believe that Biden himself has had a role in ensuring Trump was indicted, including a third of Democrats, 54 percent of black voters, and 58 percent of Hispanic respondents. Also, more than half — 56 percent — say they want the DOJ to “stop targeting Donald Trump and interfering with the upcoming presidential election and Biden should let the voters decide who the next president should be,” the survey said.
“Biden is trying to make Donald Trump the Nelson Mandela of America,” said Trump pollster John McLaughlin told Bedard.
He wrote: Mandela spent 27 years in jail because he opposed South Africa’s white leadership and he was elected president when he was eventually freed, turned out of jail as a hero for standing firm in rejecting his opponents.
The poll was done before the left-leaning Colorado Supreme Court booted Trump off the primary ballot pending an appeal, but McLaughlin said the move fits a pattern Republican and some moderate voters see as a Soviet-style effort to silence enemies.
“To disenfranchise the leading political candidate in the United States is sad for American democracy and freedoms,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin suggested that, like the indictments, the ballot ban in Colorado and potentially other states could have the unintended consequence of strengthening Trump. He added that he’s been tracking that pattern for months.
“It’s only galvanizing the support for him, the political persecution. It’s scary,” he said.
“So far, all their indictments have backfired and made Trump stronger because the majority of fair-minded Americans see this for what it is. And now, with the decision to take him off the ballot, people are losing their civil rights. Trump’s losing his right to free speech and his right as a citizen, and in the meantime, you have the voters losing their civil rights to vote to decide who they want as president. And if they can do this to Trump, they can do it to any Republican or any political opponent,” the New York-based pollster and McLaughlin & Associates partner added.
The pollster went on to note that he also does surveys for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and other East European leaders in former Soviet states. He said they Orban told him he sees Biden doing the same thing to Trump that the Soviets did to take over Hungary in 1947.
“I’ve got European clients who are telling me this is what the communists did in 1947. And they’re like, ‘Biden can’t lecture us about democracy,’ you know, because they have free elections,” McLaughlin told Bedard.
In June, Trump, during his first campaign event following one of his first indictments, claimed that his polling numbers and fundraising were both “through the roof” after he was indicted on 37 federal felony counts over his possession of classified documents.
Trump revealed that his legal team had been notified by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith regarding an indictment related to the investigation into the mishandling of classified documents.
The unprecedented development marked the first instance in U.S. history where a former president faced federal criminal charges.
