The GOP is Actually Relieved Trump is On Trial
Imagine your party’s presumptive nominee for president is about to stand trial for paying off a porn star he allegedly slept with just months after his wife gave birth to their son.
The allegations alone are seedy enough. Then throw in witnesses like the unfortunately named former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, convicted felon Michael Cohen, and the whole sordid affair is a pretty gross but revealing look at the presidential contender’s inner circle and private life.
This would ordinarily spell doom for the presidential candidate — and his party. Ordinarily, a party might consider nominating someone else rather than endure the embarrassing and unseemly details that will emerge from this undignified affair.
Ordinarily, a party might distance themselves from the candidate so as not to appear to endorse his depraved and perhaps illegal behavior, especially if that candidate were also facing three other criminal trials for deeds just as — if not more so — unbecoming.
But these are not ordinary times. And today’s Republican Party abandoned ordinary years ago in favor of extraordinary, unprecedented, self-destructive, even disastrous.
Donald Trump has simultaneously been the Republicans’ biggest boon, energizing and consolidating the base in ways never before seen, as well as the biggest drag on a party that lost the White House, House and Senate in four short years.
And now he’s on trial for hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, a trial many think he will lose. But believe it or not — and here’s the kicker — Republicans are relieved this trial is finally underway. Yes, I said relieved.
The last few months of the presidential election have put Republicans on the defensive over women’s reproductive rights.
In the fallout from the overturning of Roe v. Wade — a seismic Supreme Court decision that Trump routinely takes credit for, despite it being very unpopular— Republicans are in an uncomfortable, white-hot spotlight.
There were the early and embarrassing losses in red states like Ohio and Kansas, where voters rejected efforts to effectively ban abortions.
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