Powerhouse accounting firm Mazars USA offered weary Democratic pundits and lawmakers a Valentine’s Day gift on Feb. 14, when the firm officially announced it could no longer stand behind over a decade of financial statements submitted in the name of former President Trump.
Mazars’ decision to cut ties with the embattled former president offered a shockingly public look at how close Trump is skating to multiple criminal indictments in his home state of New York. But Democrats shouldn’t pop the champagne just yet. Despite mounting legal setbacks and the very real risk of a criminal case against him, Republican voters have never been more unified behind a Trump 2024 campaign — indictment or not.
That twisted reality puts Democrats in a difficult political spot. Not only has Trump failed to fade from view after his humiliating 2020 defeat; in many ways the former president is more visible – and more powerful – than ever. And a primetime battle with New York Attorney General Letitia James is sure to energize a GOP base that thrives on the myth that a “Deep State” is singularly focused on stopping Trump from ever returning to the White House.
The Deep State mythos Trump spent much of his four years in office perpetuating has proven valuable to him even beyond its ability to raise sacks of cash from Republican voters. Alongside Trump’s “Big Lie” that President Biden and Democrats stole the 2020 election, the GOP’s nonstop flow of excuses and paranoia has created a Republican echo chamber in which any serious investigation into Trump’s wrongdoing is immediately dismissed as a continuation of Democrats’ imagined coup.
As a result, any effort to hold Trump accountable for his corruption and potential tax evasion becomes a conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy, and no one on the right has proven as adept at marketing conspiracy theories for fun and profit as Trump himself.
The logical question to ask is: Where is the limit? If the GOP has effectively created a deep feeling that the Department of Justice, the FBI, the federal courts and ethics laws are illegitimate in the eyes of their voters, is there anything stopping Trump from walking onto the 2024 debate stage as the candidate to beat? Could Trump, as he famously said during the 2016 campaign, shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters?
Absolutely. And if recent polling from CBS News is any indication, Republican voters aren’t in the mood for one of Trump’s MAGA proteges — they want the real thing. Nearly 70 percent of GOP voters say Trump should run for president in 2024, compared to just one in three Americans overall. And while more than 8-in-10 Republicans say they would prefer more candidates who agree with Trump on everything from the Big Lie to COVID-19 conspiracy theories, none of the Republicans hailed as possible Trump replacements have made so much as a dent in the former president’s commanding loyalty among the GOP base.
Despite some efforts from the GOP to build a bench of ideologically-aligned but less explosive Trump alternatives such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the project isn’t going well. A recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll gave Trump a clear 57 percent majority among Republican voters, with his closest rival, DeSantis, effectively tied with former Vice President Mike Pence at 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively.
Trump enjoys such a durable popularity in Republican circles precisely because his actions above and outside the law coincide with a growing antidemocratic, authoritarian approach within the party itself. And while that seed existed within the GOP before Trump, no one worked as hard as Trump to guarantee its growth. Now the American electorate must face a serious ethical challenge: Many voters support Trump precisely because he rejects democratic accountability structures and considers himself a revolutionary force insulated from legal consequence.
Trump’s voters don’t just envy the ease with which Trump thumbs his nose at legal challenges. They also buy into Trump’s promise that he will undo “leftist” efforts at accountability by pardoning the men and women responsible for the deadly Jan. 6 riots and others who enable his efforts to move the United States off its democratic bedrock and into a much darker period of unaccountable cartel government. And Republican lawmakers like Hawley, who recently began selling a mug celebrating his notorious raised fist salute to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, are more than happy to let Trump run wild in the hopes of someday claiming his power for themselves.
Our nation does not have the benefit of relaxing its vigilance just yet. There will be no post-Trump Republican future as long as the former president is in complete control of the messaging and fundraising levers that guarantee the Republican Party falls in line to his antidemocratic whims. If Democrats take Trump’s massive influence for granted, they will soon face a devastating repeat of 2016 — except this time with a Trump administration that has already conquered any opposition within its own party ranks. That would be a devastating blow for democracy.
Max Burns is a Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies, a progressive communications firm. Follow him on Twitter @themaxburns.