Messaging the Trump Indictments politically
Means not mentioning politics at all
Donald Trump has test run a bunch of potential defenses in each of his four criminal cases and all of them have fared worse than his “explanations” in the E Jean Carroll defamation matter and in business fraud trial brought by NY Attorney General Letitia James.
It’s as if Robert Webber’s character1 in “12 Angry Men” was reborn:
“Anyway, I was telling you — at the agency, when they reach a point like this in the meeting, there’s always some character ready with an idea. And it kills me, it’s the weirdest thing the way they precede the idea with some kind of phrase. Like — say some account exec’ll say, ‘Here’s an idea. Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes it,’ or ‘Put it on a bus and see if it gets off at Wall Street.’ I mean it’s idiotic, but it’s funny.”
While Trump has given “explanations” of sorts in every case, his tendency has been to couch his legal problems as political attacks on him. And while it’s working well within his MAGA base and in partisan circles, it’s not selling well with Independents.
I asked a pro-Trump co-worker to give me an apolitical defense in the E Jean Carroll case or the civil business fraud case or the case now in trial, and he parroted Trump’s rants. I pressed him to give me an apolitical answer. Crickets.
The next day, however, he challenged me to do it.
“Easy. E Jean Carroll. Donald Trump doesn’t go for a certain type of woman — he goes for a certain age bracket. When E Jean Carroll was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump, she was 52. Trump met his first wife Ivana when she was 27, met Melania when she was 28, Marla Maples when whe was 27. Stormy Daniels was 27. Karen MacDougal must have looked really young to Donald…she was 35. Claiming a woman is ugly or not your type is idiotic…saying you go for women in their 20s makes you sound like Jack Nicholson.
“The business fraud case — The message Donald Trump should have hammered every day: ‘I rely on accountants and lawyers to handle that stuff. The fact that the Trump name makes my properties worth more might upset my detractors and the fact that I don’t think that New York State is entitled to tax my name is why we are here battling Ms James in a Manhattan courtroom.’
“The Manhattan DA’s case is even easier. ‘In addition to running The Trump Organization, I was a TV producer. I usually was very careful about having people I worked with or was in discussions with having on my show sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). We had a few NDAs fall through the cracks and I relied on my lawyers to handle those lapses in my standard business practices.’”
While there are sizable evidentiary holes in the above explanations, the last thing Donald Trump needs is for Independents (43% of the voters) and moderates (36% of voters)2 to figure out that his partisan rants about Joe Biden and Democrats being behind his legal troubles are nonsense.
While the Political Left might be obsessed with Trump’s legal problems, the political middle is largely detached from it. Donald Trump constantly preaches to the choir, when he should consider who will be sitting in the jury box — non-partisan Independents and likely moderates politically.
Hillary Clinton lost the race for Independents 41%-47% in 2016, but won 52 % of moderates to Trump’s 41%. In 2020, Joe Biden won 51% of Independents (a 10 point swing) and 64% of moderates (a 12 point increase over 2016).
Ranting and raving and blaming Joe Biden won’t sell well, if the legal analysts are on every channel explaining how strong the cases against Trump are; or worse still, how Donald Trump’s attacks on witnesses landed him in jail.
Webber was Juror 12, an advertising company executive
https://news.gallup.com/poll/548459/independent-party-tied-high-democratic-new-low.aspx