Senate Republicans are predicting that a special grand jury investigation into Donald Trump will not affect his standing with Republican voters, arguing that the former president has “a pretty good hold on the base of our party” and that his followers are “unlikely to be swayed by almost anything.”
Republicans think that the investigation by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. will only further deepen partisan divisions over Trump’s behavior and believe that even if he’s indicted, it won’t diminish him as a political force in 2022 and beyond, and thus confirming that its base is a cult for Trump.
One Senate Republican who requested anonymity told The Hill that Trump would have to be “in jail” to be neutralized as a political force.
“It’s one thing if someone’s in jail,” the source said, predicting that otherwise, Trump will be able to paint any criminal investigations of his business practices as political retribution.
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Other Republicans say the investigation is evidence that Democrats want to keep Trump in the spotlight to drag them down in the midterm election. However, they doubt Trump’s grip on the GOP base will be weakened by any criminal case against Trump.
“I don’t think anything coming out of New York is going to affect Trump very much,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), according to The Hill.
At the same time, Graham admitted that the GOP’s political fortunes in 2022 and beyond are intertwined with Trump’s.
“His fate is our fate. If we do well in 2022 it helps him because he’s the leader of the party. If we don’t do well it hurts him. So time will tell,” he said.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said that “people have to be prepared to accept it if Trump is indicted or convicted” but he noted that political experts have wrongly predicted Trump’s demise many times before.
“We’ve seen this before where a lot of people thought they had him and upon further review turns out they didn’t,” Cramer said, referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s lengthy multi-million-dollar probe into alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian officials.
“I still expect that this would not go anywhere,” Cramer said of a grand-jury investigation into Trump.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who twice voted to convict Trump on articles of impeachment, said that Trump’s base won’t be swayed by almost anything.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate on what his legal future might be and as to what impact that would have on politics, you’d have to talk to some pundits,” he said. “He seems to have a pretty good hold on the base of our party. I think that’s unlikely to be swayed by almost anything.”
As noted by The Hill, Trump declared in 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?”
Indeed. The Republican party is a Trump cult.
