“It feels sort of surreal.” That’s how one political reporter sized up this week’s split screen media moment, with second- and third-tier 2024 Republican candidates taking the stage in Milwaukee as party front-runner Donald Trump is expected to surrender to 2020-election-related charges in Atlanta. The reporter continued: “If you were to have said to me six months ago, he’s gonna be indicted by two different states and twice by the federal government, and his numbers are gonna go up, and he’ll be saying, Keep indicting me, my numbers are gonna go up—I’m not sure I would have believed that.”
Indeed, despite facing 91 charges across four separate criminal cases, the former president has 62% of the GOP primary vote, according to a CBS News poll released Sunday. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is trailing at 16%—the only other Republican presidential candidate whom the poll puts in the double digits. “We’re just in this really foggy period of time. Trump is such a unique and singular figure, where all of these negatives are so built into his brand and shocking things don’t seem to really affect him that much,” said a second political reporter. “We’re seeing a lot of signs the electorate doesn’t give a shit overall. All of this noise, and the signal hasn’t really changed.”
Trump has cited his whopping lead in his decision to skip the first primary debate, hosted by Fox News, and perhaps the rest. He’ll surely dominate headlines regardless this week, as he is expected to turn himself in at a Fulton County jail in Georgia—and reportedly plans to counterprogram the debate through a pretaped interview with former top Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who was taken off the air earlier this year.
“The most important news story this week, affecting the presidential election, is not going to be on that debate stage,” a third political reporter said, referring to the Georgia charges. But there’s still reason to pay attention to Milwaukee, they added. “I must admit that I am really excited to go, because despite this concept [that the debate doesn’t matter if Trump doesn’t show], the fact of the matter is that half the party, polling shows, doesn’t want Trump.” The debate presents an opportunity for the rest of the qualified contenders—DeSantis, Chris Christie, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Doug Burgum, and Mike Pence, as of this writing—to distinguish themselves, but they’ll likely do so based on how they handle questions about the former president.
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum, who is co-moderating with Bret Baier, recently told me that it will “absolutely be incumbent” upon the candidates to address Trump’s criminal charges, acknowledging that it could be a “minefield” for them. “He’s completely blotting out the sun,” a fourth political reporter said of Trump. “I see it as a continuation of what’s gone on during this campaign and also what’s gone on in the last eight years,” they said of the dynamic. “It’s made it very hard for any of these other candidates to get any real attention. Does anyone know what Nikki Haley said yesterday?”
“It’s gonna be a debate to see who can be number two,” the second political reporter said, likening Christie—the most vocal Trump critic of the bunch—to the scorpion in the “Scorpion and the Frog” fable. “If Donald Trump is not there, then Ron DeSantis is getting stung. And what better thing than to watch your two enemies destroy each other?” This reporter wasn’t very optimistic about the viewing experience. “Expectations are very low that it’s gonna be that interesting. This is covering, like, the junior varsity,” they said.
Some I spoke to are most interested to see who, aside from Christie, will be willing to take the gloves off on Trump. “It’s sort of a bizarre situation where he’s ahead of them by 40 points and they won’t take him on most of the time—in fact, most of the time they defend him,” said the first political reporter. “The whole thing has been, throughout his presidency, these folks who view themselves as smart Republicans saying he’s gonna fade, or go away on his own, or the justice system will take care of it, or voters will change their mind. Clearly, eight years in, sitting back and hoping someone else does something about it has not worked for Republicans who want to take him on.”
Unprecedented is a word that has been thrown around often since 2016 to describe Trump and his impact on national politics. Some journalists feel it has never been more fitting than it is now. “It’s really uncharted territory for American political reporters,” as one put it, especially given those on the trail who are not necessarily familiar with the intricacies of the federal and state criminal law they’re now reporting on and talking to voters about. “It’s become a story where the people who cover the Justice Department and FBI are as much a part of the 2024 story as political reporters,” the reporter said. “They’re just as essential.”
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