Opinion | The Trump Divide that Should Have Republicans Terrified

The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump’s interview with Bret Baier of Fox News on Monday night was a disaster for the former president.

This is a reasonable view, assuming, that is, you believe that it’s a bad thing that he talked about having boxes with his clothes mixed in with classified documents, maintained he didn’t have time to comply with federal demands for the return of documents, and stated baldly, once again, that he won the 2020 election.

But it is a profoundly erroneous take if you fail to account for what many Republicans likely saw and heard — a man beset by a two-tiered justice system fighting back spiritedly against unfair charges, and a former president who still fills the screen and never loses his sense of command.

It’s pretty typical that partisans regard their leaders differently than the rest of the public, but the divide between GOP opinion of Trump and the way the middle of the electorate regards him is deep and abiding.

Not only that, the indictments of Trump are making him stronger in the Republican nomination fight — generating GOP sympathy and making him the center of attention — while he’s taking on more baggage for a prospective general election. This push-and-pull, yin-and-yang dynamic, with Republicans growing more attached to a candidate harder to elect, may yet prove decisive in both contests.

It’s not unusual that, in the course of winning a nomination, politicians create electoral vulnerabilities for themselves by moving too far right or left. Hence, the conventional trajectory of a nominee trying to readjust by coming back to the center in a general.

This is different. What adjustments can Trump make? He can’t get un-indicted for the general election, or jettison his claims about the 2020 election, or reverse all the water that passed under the bridge since 2015. He’s not going to become more polite or give up ALL CAPS TRUTH SOCIAL POSTS.

What Republicans find alluring about Trump is, with some exceptions, what the rest of the electorate finds noxious, and vice versa.

It’s not so much Trump’s positions as his persona — in other words, the GOP isn’t potentially taking an electoral risk to advance an ideological goal or a set of policies, but to associate itself with a political figure it likes and almost no one else does.

Republicans view Trump as a victim, the broader electorate a malefactor; GOP voters find him charming and entertaining, other voters needlessly insulting and controversial; for Republicans, he’s a bold truth-teller, for everyone else, he’s not trustworthy.

This doesn’t mean that Trump can’t win a general, only that there’s a built-in resistance to his candidacy that it will require considerable luck to overcome.

It’s a symptom of the divide on Trump that the indictment by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, which was indeed disgracefully weak, boosted Trump up to another level of dominance in the GOP primary race, while at the same time most voters took the charges seriously. Fifty-four percent of all voters approved of the indictment in an Economist/YouGov poll and a plurality of independents approved, while 68 percent of Republicans strongly or somewhat disapproved.

On the documents case, it’s the same thing. According to a new Harvard/Harris poll, 60 percent of independents think the federal government has a strong case, while only 30 percent of Republicans do. Among independents, 45 percent think he’s guilty and should be convicted, while 15 percent of Republicans do.

It may be wash, rinse, and repeat, with possibly another two indictments on their way. These kind of disparities in public opinion apply to Trump generally. According to a CNN poll, 71 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Trump, while 63 percent of independents have an unfavorable view.

In the latest Economist/YouGov poll, 48 percent of independents view him very unfavorably, and 53 percent of Republicans very favorably.

A NPR/Marist survey found that 71 percent of Republicans want Trump to be president again, and 68 percent of independents don’t want him to be president again. And so on.

If the GOP had set out to identify the least popular candidate it could find that could still win the Republican nomination (usually, broad unpopularity isn’t much of a political calling card), it’s hard to see how it could do any better than Trump.

Once he’s not in the equation, Republicans and independents tend to align better. According to the Harvard/Harris poll, 92 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of independents think the FBI documents related to the alleged bribe of President Joe Biden when he was vice president should be released, and 87 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of independents think Biden talked business with Hunter.

Despite everything, what makes a Trump victory in the general entirely imaginable is that Biden has the same problem with the middle of the electorate. In the CNN poll, Biden’s favorable rating is 73 percent among Democrats and 25 percent among independents.

Just like in 2016 and 2020, Trump could be propped up by the weakness of his opponent, although he’ll need more help than ever. The new CNN poll shows Trump’s favorable rating dipping a little among GOP-aligned voters. Maybe that’s a blip; maybe it’s a trend. But the way it’s been working to this point is, as Trump becomes a heavier lift, Republican voters are more inclined to pick him up and try to get him over the finish line in November 2024.

What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, Nietzsche famously wrote. In this case, what might really kill Trump in a general makes him stronger with Republican primary voters.