Trump's indictment is a make-or-break moment for voters — across the spectrum | Mike Kelly

Just in time for April Fool’s Day, Donald Trump has become the first president in history to be charged with a crime.

This is no joke, however.

Trump will, of course, try to turn our attention to himself, casting himself as the victim of a “witch hunt.” 

Just hours after the announcement Thursday evening that the Manhattan District Attorney announced that a grand jury voted to indict Trump as part of his hush money payments to his alleged mistress — who happens to be a former porn star — the former president was emailing his supporters with yet another appeal for money. He did not mention the porn star or the hush money. Or the possibility he doctored his books to cover up everything.

So the first lesson of this new chapter in history is that crime might actually pay for Trump. In the two weeks since the former president speculated that he was about to be “arrested,” he reportedly raised more than $2 million for his presidential campaign.

Now he expects to raise more apparently.  “Please make a contribution – of truly any amount – to defend our movement from the never-ending witch hunts and WIN the WHITE HOUSE in 2024,” he wrote.

On Tuesday, when Trump is expected to appear in a Manhattan courtroom to answer the charges in the indictment, which reportedly includes more than 30 counts, you can expect more of the same rhetoric. But beyond the rhetorical chaos that will surely engulf Trump, this latest chapter offers important challenges for three corners of America — "red," "blue" and "purple."

Will the indictment matter to Trump nation?

For the so-called "red" MAGA world of Trump followers — "Trump nation," as some call it — the indictment once again raises the question of how they can remain loyal to a leader who continually pushes the boundaries of good taste, ethics and, in this case, the law. As one supporter in Pennsylvania told me after Trump's election, “I never expected Trump to be a choirboy.”

But does "red" America have any boundaries on its support for Trump?

In his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump insulted veterans, disabled people and women — to name just a few targets. It didn't matter. As Trump again seeks the presidency in 2024, will it matter that he has been indicted?

For Never Trumpers, will the indictment prove too petty?

For the anti-Trump crowd, another key question emerges: Is this latest legal attack on Trump too petty?

Paying hush money to anyone — even a porn star — is not illegal. And covering up those payments and doctoring your financial records is generally categorized as just a misdemeanor.

The Manhattan investigation suggests that Trump reportedly took the additional step of using those false records to commit a felony violation of campaign finance laws.

Is this alleged criminality complicated? Absolutely. But most voters will rightly ask whether this crime is really all that serious. And on a political and legal level, is this alleged miscue too small for a district attorney — a Democrat in Manhattan, no less — to jump into the history books with an unprecedented indictment of a former president?

That question is certain to follow this case. Trump is already raising it.

But another question looms here — and it’s just as important. Shouldn’t all Americans, even former presidents who claim to be billionaires, be held accountable to the same laws as ordinary citizens? And should the size of the alleged crime matter?

These questions become even more important when you consider that Trump faces far more serious allegations that he mishandled and lied about top-secret government files, that he tried to pressure local election officials to doctor votes in the 2020 presidential election and that he ordered a coup-like assault on the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden.

What we know: Donald Trump is the first former president to face criminal charges.

'An outrage': What Trump's potential rivals for 2024 are saying about his indictment

What about Americans in the middle?

Trump’s legal troubles in Manhattan, beginning next week, may be just the beginning of a much longer journey. At the same time, it may open a whole new chapter in how another, far quieter group of American voters think.

Experts say these voters are something of a third constituency — those who are neither “red state” Trump loyalists or “blue state” members of the lock-him-up crowd.

Call this the “purple” corner of America.

This part of the nation has grown restless as wages stagnate and an “American Dream” seems more like a Norman Rockwell painting that is preserved and admired in a museum but no longer fits into everyday reality.

They vote for Democrats sometimes. But they also support Republicans. They watch CNN, but tune into Fox, too.

They don't fit neatly into the boxes that political parties and the media have created. In short, they are trying to make sense of the political circus that has engulfed America for more than a decade. And at the same time, this “purple” constituency has grown frustrated with government’s inability to deal with basic issues that range from gun violence and immigration to crumbling roads, rails, bridges and airports.

Trump stumbled into American politics in 2015 as the nation had grown frustrated on many levels.

President Barack Obama was basking in the glow of his precedent-setting election and was about to retire and write his glowing memoir. But at the end of eight years of a presidency that was described as “transformative” by progressive admirers, the hard truth is that Obama had done almost nothing to curb gun violence, to stem the tide of undocumented immigration or to fix the nation’s broken infrastructure. To name just a few chronic problems.

Obama blamed Republicans in Congress — for good reason. Republicans offered few workable solutions to the nation's long-standing troubles. But American presidents do not become great by merely attacking their enemies. They achieve greatness by finding ways to work with their opponents. Tragically, Obama never figured out how to do that.

Trump walked into the White House as a “can-do” businessman. But like Obama, he never figured out how to work with his opponents either.

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Instead, Trump spent four years tripping over himself, making promises that he never fulfilled, pumping up enemies who grew more powerful each time he attacked them, picking fights that meant little in the lives of ordinary voters.

Remember Trump’s “infrastructure week”?  How about his promised health insurance that would be cheaper than Obamacare? And how about that Trumpian plan to straighten out America’s relationship with Russia? And China?  And Iran? And North Korea?

That worked out real well, didn’t it?

If you followed Trump’s rise as an Atlantic City casino boss and his record of self-promotion, inflated marketing claims, doctored financial records and refusal to pay bills to hardworking contractors, you knew all about his record of hollow promises.

Now as America’s so-called “purple” voters look back and try to find their place in America’s partisan crossfire, they may rightly ask why Trump failed so much.

What could play out in court

Which brings us back to that Manhattan courtroom.

The charges that Trump will answer on Tuesday highlight two of his worst habits — his willingness to skirt the law and his tendency to exaggerate and even lie to divert attention from his problems.

Trump will likely play the victim card, claiming he is targeted in a continuing “witch hunt.”  But in the end, facts are facts. And Trump will have to answer to whether he stooped into the ethical gutter to pay a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged tryst. And then he will have to answer whether his gang of flunkies falsified ledger sheets to cover up those payments — all to avoid scrutiny under the nation’s campaign finance laws.

Those election laws were enacted and strengthened a half-century ago in the wake of the Watergate scandal in which a treacherous and lying president claimed to be the victim of a petty investigation led by Democrats. But as Richard Nixon learned in the early 1970s, sometimes the small stuff looms large, especially if you try to cover it up.

Donald Trump is about the face the same challenge. But in Trump’s case, what happens in Manhattan may be just the beginning.

“I am not afraid of what’s to come,” Trump wrote Friday morning in yet another fundraising appeal. “This is the battle I willingly signed up for when I decided to take on the entire Washington Machine as a political outsider.”

The question now looming in front of America’s voters is whether they signed up for this, too.

The search for an answer starts next week in Manhattan.

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com as well as the author of three critically acclaimed non-fiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in New Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Donald Trump indictment: Where will voters land?