America's Talking - Convictions Fail to Sink Trump’s Campaign

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

A New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts last week, but so far it seems to have done little to dampen Trump's electoral hopes. The conviction naturally raised the question of whether they would topple Trump’s 2024 White House bid. For now, the answer appears to be no. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, June 14th. About two weeks since the New York City jury convicted former President Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments to a former porn star, Trump's momentum hasn't slowed. The presumptive Republican nominee to take on President Joe Biden in November, Trump's fundraising his sword is polling has remained steady, and he's back on the campaign trail. Joining me to discuss the presidential race is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief,

or the Center Square. Casey, a few developments this week, but let's start with Trump's momentum. To this point, it doesn't seem to have slowed. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think that's right. This has been a really big month for this election. Of course, we are in the election year. So in a certain sense, every month is big.

But, of course, you know, we have, you know, conviction, conviction for former President Donald Trump, conviction for the president's son, Hunter Biden. Then we, you know, had the fall out of that. And then we actually had a handful of elections this week. And so here, I'll wrap up some takeaways. First off, when you, I've looked at the polling closely and we can get into more specific stand if you'd like. But overall, if you have. had any hope or thought that these convictions would be the end of former President Donald Trump's political career, you were definitely wrong about that. He's held strong. He's doing well against

Biden. My read of the polls actually is that he's winning. He has a slight edge over Biden. Even after these convictions, even when you look at polls that were conducted, not released, but conducted after the news of Trump's guilty verdict came out. And so that's a huge takeaway. These convictions have not sunk Trump's campaign. Here's another one. This week on Tuesday, we had a handful of elections, and Republicans did well, but, you know, that doesn't mean too much. But what's really interesting is that the candidates that Trump endorsed did well.

I don't think a single Trump endorsed candidate actually lost on Tuesday. That's, you know, primary and otherwise. So the Trump endorsement seems to have retained its value. There were real questions about this after the last round of elections where Trump didn't fare so well with his endorsements. But I think this will help him build momentum. This will rally members of Congress to support Trump and seek that endorsement because he just flexed that muscle, which says, hey, my endorsement means something.

It can't help you win. And that's, it's, and he wasn't unopposed. I mean, there were some, you know, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his allies who were sort of trying to take out like Nancy Mace, for example, who was one of the eight lawmakers who, you know, worked with Matt Gates to try to get, to get, to get, rid of McCarthy, who was eventually replaced by Johnson. And so there was an effort to kind of punish in Mace, it seems, for that decision. But Trump endorsement, she did just fine. So that Trump endorsement worked. And then, you know, last thing is there was a poll came out this week about

Kamala Harris, vice president, of course, for President Joe Biden. And, you know, the top line, headline for that poll is that voters don't think that Kamala Harris is the heir apparent to Joe Biden, which of course is important for the next race when, you know, the end of his potential second term. But it's even more important because with Biden's age, his health problems, his apparent decline, and even rumors of some effort to switch out the candidates this summer, it looks like Harris is not necessarily top of the list for that. Right.

And Biden so far is sticking with Harris, and there's no indication that he would ever drop her from the ticket. Right. If Biden does, is the Democratic candidate after the Democratic National Convention in August. And they do not go with somebody else. For example, say California governor Gavin Newsom, and it is Biden. Kamala Harris seems to be on there, but it doesn't look like Americans trust her to be next in line, you know, particularly with President Biden's both physical and mental health.

issues. Can he last another four years in office? And if not, that would make Kamau Harris the heir apparent, of course. So does that factor into voters' minds come voting in November? Of course, there's a wrong way to November, as we've said. Who knows what Democrats are going to do in August? President Biden is the presumptive nominee, just as President Trump is the presumptive nominee. But both of them have these looming issues that could change things. As I mentioned up top, but Casey Trump was on the campaign trail, is back on the campaign trail after the New York City trial is over. He was in Las Vegas earlier this week, where he panned President Biden's administrative actions on the border. Of course, the border is right up there with inflation in the economy is the number one, is the top issue voters across

the country have said is on the top of their minds. President Biden last week, three and a half years into his administration finally took some executive action, which was heavily criticized, though, as the Center Square reported by Republicans, but not just Republicans, by former border chiefs, people who used to work for customs and border protection is not really a solution to the more than nearly 12 million illegal border crossings we've seen under. Biden. Well, that was one of the first things that Trump pounced on in his campaign speech in Las Vegas earlier this week. Yeah, I mean, Trump wants to make this election about the border. It's a top concern and it's his top issue. And so he wants to make it about that. I think Biden passed head executive order to try, you know, enacted that executive order to try to end the conversation about immigration and say, we address this, we dealt with it. Let's talk about abortion. That's what Biden wants to talk about. And so, you know, the order itself is really interesting.

We don't have to go so deep into it. But it's really interesting because it kind of contradicts the trajectory that Biden had been on with his past executive orders. For instance, you know, the fight over remain in Mexico, Biden administration has been very opposed to the remaining Mexico policy, which of course, stymies immigration and illegal immigration. He's been, you know, he's made it very difficult to deport anyone, which of course Trump is now running on like a mass deportation platform, which is. which is very interesting and unusual. So, you know, Biden has been very supportive in his executive actions of opening up the borders. And so now here we are in election year and he, you know, he enacts this executive order saying it's going to kind of clamp down. There's a lot of dispute over whether it would actually do that. But I think it's, you know, I think most Americans kind of

see what's going on here. It's an election year effort to end this conversation to say he addressed it. he's regularly blamed House Republicans for not giving him enough funding, but I don't think most Americans buy that. So, you know, immigration is a top issue. Inflation is a top issue. I don't think Biden thinks he can really do much about inflation at this point. I mean, if you're trying, you're a listener trying to buy a house right now and you're looking at these interest rates, you know, you understand just how bad this inflation, which of course leads to higher interest rates problem has become. So Biden has a lot of issue problems. But this isn't just an issue's election, Dan.

We have convictions. We have, you know, a VP who hasn't been announced for Republicans. We have the Trump factor. And we have, you know, potential wars overseas. So we can't just boil it down to a couple of domestic issues maybe like we could in years, in years past. Thank you for joining us today. Casey, I am guessing we're going to be talking about the presidential election a lot during the coming months. Of course, listeners can keep up with all of the center square's coverage. of the presidential election and more at thecentersquare.com.