Trump's bravado tested as legal woes overlap with 2024 presidential poll campaign
FirstpostFormer US president Donald Trump’s legal woes come at a time he is leading the Republican field for the 2024 election presidential nominee. “A lot of times you have a candidate who’s in trouble, you create a diversion,” said Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin. As he was behind closed doors at the courthouse being booked and fingerprinted, his campaign began advertising a “NEW ITEM” to donors: A t-shirt featuring a doctored black-and-white “mug shot” of Trump, complete with an exaggerated height chart and the words, “NOT GUILTY.” In reality, Trump was not subjected to a mug shot Tuesday — one of several exceptions from normal operating procedure made for the former president — underscoring the contrast between the image he hoped to project and his actual appearance as he faced 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. “The GREAT PATRIOTS inside and outside of the Courthouse on Tuesday were unbelievably nice, in fact, they couldn’t have been nicer,” Trump said in a statement. “Who would ever have thought that an indictment would be anything but a negative?” McLaughlin, the Trump pollster, said he has found Republican primary voters are rallying around the former president.