How Donald Trump Could Run His Campaign From Jail

A protester outside a Miami courthouse on Tuesday. Photo: Eva Marie Uscategui/Bloomberg. immediate practical problems: given his position and prominence, where could he be safe in custody? Every living president is entitled to secret service protection; should Trump's special agents join him in prison?

In addition, there are political implications that are even more incomprehensible. It seems unlikely that Trump would turn himself in just because he was found guilty. On the contrary, he and his supporters are only becoming more radicalized. His campaign messages ahead of 2024 already have an almost apocalyptic tone. He promises voters that he will be “your retribution” against the “Deep State,” by which he means the network of national security and intelligence agencies, politicized judges, and nefarious journalists who are trying to bring him down, and therefore America. His more hardline supporters, who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, already gathered outside a Miami courthouse yesterday to protest his latest indictment. Things can quickly turn ugly.

Trump voters agree with his assessment that he was the victim of a “witch hunt.” He's already facing criminal charges in New York for falsifying business records, and last month a Manhattan court ruled him “civil law” for sexual harassment. However, his presidential campaign never stops, and—an interesting dynamic—the more he gets in trouble with the law, the more his support grows among Republican voters.

His political opponents, the Democrats who run the Justice Department, are very optimistic about this situation: they believe that although Trump fans may love him no matter what, the majority will always consider him and his MAGA movement too toxic to suffer. His election in 2016 was an aberration, the argument goes: Trumpism failed in the 2020 presidential election, as well as the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections.

Gray: “Trump's aides like to point out that anyone else facing the legal and media pressure he faced would be a broken man – but not Donald' Credit: Shutterstock

Yet part of Trump's appeal, especially among evangelicals, has always been his messianic delivery to voters who feel the system is against them. He loves to share an online meme that reads, “They don't really want me. It's you. I'm just getting in the way.” Trump aides and campaign talking heads like to point out that any other person facing the legal and media assault that he himself has faced would be a broken man, but not Donald.

If he went to jail, even if the evidence against him were damning, his supporters would only feel that he was right. In 2016, he famously boasted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose a single voter.” In 2024, he could have campaigned for re-election to the post of commander in chief while incarcerated as a serious threat to national security, and his fans would only admire him more.

But it's not just hardcore fans who prefer potential convict Donald to the Justice Department. The idea of ​​a righteous rebel, maverick, or outlaw speaks to something deep in the free-spirited American psyche—think Jesse James, James Dean, or the abolitionist John Brown. Americans tend to be more cynical about high-level criminal charges than, say, the British, and therefore the stigma of being accused is less strong. “If you are not charged, you are not invited,” say, for example, party goers in New York.

This skepticism stems in part from the fact that for centuries the more democratic American justice system has been more politicized than that of the UK. Openly political people run and win elections as judges, district attorneys, or other officials, and the Justice Department is headed by a person in the White House, even if it is still theoretically bound by the constitution.

Trump supporters outside the courthouse on Tuesday. Photo: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg

This inevitably leads to a widespread sense of bias. Trump's trial in New York, for example, was led by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg and overseen by Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom are longtime and outspoken critics of the politician they are trying to convict. /p>

Trump, incarcerated, will play on America's inherent suspicion of the legal system. Convinced of his innocence and considering himself Christ-like in his willingness to suffer for humanity, he will not be embarrassed by any criminal with a “cartoon shot” – moreover, he will use it as a badge of honor. His campaign team will distribute the image in their promotional materials.

We've seen this before, though never with the man who occupied the Oval Office. In 1920, Eugene V Debs, a socialist, ran for president from behind bars and won just under a million votes, a staggering amount for a man of his radicalism. He was brutally jailed under the Sedition Act of 1918 for his opposition to American intervention in World War I.

His supporters made a virtue of his renegade status, handing out pictures of him in prisoner jeans, as well as campaign badges reading “Prisoner 9653″. “I thank the capitalist masters for putting me here,” Debs said from prison. “They know what my place is in their criminal and corrupt system. That's the only compliment they could give me.” It is possible that Trump, sitting in prison, says something similar, although instead of “capitalists” he would use the word “globalists”.

Unlike Debs, Trump would be the party's top nominee. And many Republicans, even Trump fans, may consider the convict vote too big a step. After the burst of media attention following his imprisonment, he found it difficult to campaign. There would be legendary rallies without Trump. He will probably ask his children, Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka to represent him and spread his ideas across the country. Ivanka, who many believe has political ambitions of her own, may refrain from participating in a “prison break” campaign in 2024. Trump family ties will be tested like never before.

Trump's daughters Tiffany and Ivanka Photo: Getty

Depending on Trump may not even have a mobile phone or regular internet access under the terms of the sentence.

So the 2024 election could be an even weirder version of 2020, when Joe Biden campaigned effectively from his Delaware basement, and won. It was a year of peak panic due to Covid and Black Lives Matter riots, when a sense of madness prevailed and American cities burned for weeks. If Trump goes to jail, expect American democracy to get even crazier.