With Donald Trump’s multiple court battles dominating the US Republican presidential primary, the bombastic front-runner isn’t so much raining on his rivals’ hopes of equal coverage as drowning them out completely.
A percolating scandal that would have finished off most candidates long ago, the ex-president’s growing legal threats have been a shot in the arm as he has cleaved to the old PR adage that no publicity is bad publicity.
Trump, 77, is practically all Americans can talk about in the countdown to the January 15 Iowa caucuses, leaving his rivals for the leadership of the Grand Old Party (GOP) struggling to make headlines and gain precious TV time.
“Having the leading candidate facing multiple indictments and possible disqualification makes the GOP competition incredibly unstable and unpredictable,” said Julian Zelizer, a public affairs professor at Princeton University.
“There is no playbook to follow.”
According to political aggregator RealClearPolitics, Trump is polling at 62.7 percent, while his two closest rivals, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, are in a margin-of-error tussle at 11 percent and 10.9 percent respectively.
A handful of other candidates, from entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, are barely competitive.
Wall-to-wall coverage
The hapless trailing candidates have followed the usual Iowa script, getting press photographers to snap them perched on straw bales, corn dog in hand, debating the issues of the day with potential supporters.
But a substantial proportion of their primary campaign activity has been eclipsed by evening news bulletins reporting on the latest developments in Trump’s criminal cases and civil court battles.
And the wall-to-wall coverage has been accompanied by a bump in Trump’s already stellar polling that has propelled him further into the lead in multiple states.
So how do you get the public to notice the smaller attractions in the animal house when there’s an 800-pound gorilla in the corner? It is a question that has vexed Trump’s rivals since the beginning of the campaign.
“I would say that if I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff… it distorted the primary,” DeSantis said in a recent interview.
The 45-year-old Florida governor, seen by many as the heir to the post-Trump Republican Party before a number of stumbles on the campaign trail, complained that Trump’s legal woes had “sucked out a lot of the oxygen.”
Trump’s Republican opponents could have capitalized on the controversy around his prosecutions, hammering him over the many serious charges he faces.
But that would risk a peril greater than the frustration of being ignored — angering Trump’s ultra-loyal support base.
As a result, the also-rans have been at pains to pull their punches in their rare criticisms of the front-runner, diminishing the potential for damage to his campaign.
Not being talked about
Their restraint has at times appeared farcical, particularly in the first Republican debate in Milwaukee in August.
Asked to indicate if they agreed that a victorious Trump should be entrusted with the keys to the White House even if convicted of felonies, all but two raised their hands.
Meanwhile the presumptive nominee has spent much of the campaign leaning into his legal troubles rather than trying to brush them under the carpet.
At rallies, on social media and at fundraisers, he brings up his four criminal indictments more frequently than his plans to “Make America Great Again.”
“Trump has cast a long shadow over the GOP contest so far, and that shadow has blocked in-depth discussion of policy positions,” Brown University political scientist Wendy Schiller told AFP.
“And the candidates have been unwilling to take Trump head on, which has prevented them from making space to talk about themselves and how they would differ from Trump.”
