EVERY TIME HE IS INDICTED, HIS POLL NUMBERS GO UP

Many a politician's career has ended in ignominy in the wake of scandal whereas the former Republican president seems to draw strength from charges against him. Democrats, meanwhile, are watching the courtroom drama unfold without comment

- David Smith

It was hardly the triumphant return to Washington that his camp had imagined. Donald Trump was back in the capital last week, not as president but an accused criminal. “Not guilty,” he pleaded in a hushed courtroom to four charges stemming from the effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

Outside the court, not far from the Capitol where lethal violence erupted on 6 January 2021, a follower of the former US president waved a giant flag: “Trump or death .”

The former president is twice impeached and thrice indicted but his support base is holding firm. Indeed, each negative in a court of law translates into a positive in the court of public opinion.

"The more the indictments, the better his poll numbers, the easier the argument that it's two standards of justice and Donald Trump is persecuted and picked on," said Bill Whalen, a policy fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank in Palo Alto, California.

"It's very funny, considering he's the pre-eminent bully in American politics, that no one plays the victim card better than Donald Trump." A whiff of criminality or scandal used to be career ending for politicians.

President Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate; Vice-President Spiro Agnew quit after being charged with bribery, tax evasion and conspiracy; Gary Hart's presidential campaign collapsed because of allegations of an extramarital affair; Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress after a series of sexting scandals.

Trump, on the other hand, has made state and federal charges - a combined 78 across three jurisdictions - against him a central plank of his campaign platform, casting himself as a martyr. He portrays the cases as an attack on his supporters as well.