Nidhi Razdan: Trump's rising popularity amid mounting legal woes

Gulf News

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Transcript

00:00As I sat down to write this week's piece, former US President Donald Trump was indicted

00:09in a third criminal case in the United States and faces the possibility of being indicted

00:14in a fourth one. He's made history for many reasons. He's the first American president

00:19to be impeached twice and the first American president to be facing criminal charges and

00:24could possibly go to jail for many years if he's actually convicted. But despite that,

00:30Donald Trump's popularity hasn't suffered. It's actually soared amongst his Republican

00:35voter base. And that trend, polls show, began back in April when he was first arrested and

00:41charged in a criminal matter. So as far as his voters are concerned, and his supporters

00:46are concerned, he's actually genuinely the victim of political vendetta. They feel that

00:50he's being targeted, that he's been wronged, and they believe his conspiracy theories about

00:56the last election of Joe Biden in 2020 being a stolen election. So they believe all that

01:01he says. And this is significant because, according to analysts, Trump has the support

01:06of about 40 to 45% of Republican voters in the US. And the second reason why his popularity

01:13therefore has soared is that other Republican candidates who are in the fray, like the Florida

01:19governor Ron DeSantis, they simply haven't been able to decide what they're going to

01:24do about Trump. They don't know whether they should fully go all out and attack him and

01:29therefore alienate that core base that he has. And they don't want to fully support

01:34him either. So they're kind of neither here nor there. They're not telling people not

01:38to vote for Trump, but they're also not really able to explain to people why they should

01:42vote for them instead. As a result of all of this, Trump is now the clear frontrunner

01:48for the Republican race. But there are still many, you know, strange factors at play here

01:54because America has never seen a former president or a potential presidential candidate actually

01:59possibly going to prison. The US Constitution doesn't prevent him from actually contesting

02:04for president, but it doesn't say what would happen if he was in jail. Can he still be

02:09the president? These are interesting times in America. You just have to watch this space.

02:18You just have to watch this space.

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