If Democrats were hoping to have finally put a nail in former President Donald Trump’s political hopes with Monday’s FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, they couldn’t have been more wrong.
The image of federal agents swooping into the home of the most visible face of opposition to the misbegotten Joe Biden presidency has galvanized Republican voters looking forward to turning out for the midterm elections in November.
And a poll released Thursday from one of the country’s top polling firms tells the story.
According to a Trafalgar Group survey, 83 percent of Republicans surveyed said they now were more motivated to head to the polls in November, versus only 55 percent of Democratic voters.
Even more telling, more than 70 percent of those who expressed no party affiliation said the raid had made them more motivated to vote – and another question on the poll suggests that it’s not because they’ve suddenly become more aware that Trump and the Republican Party are the kind of “danger to democracy” CNN keeps bleating about.
Answering what they thought was the motivation behind the raid, almost half of Americans overall felt it was the work of “Trump’s political enemies.”
It’s bad enough that almost half of the American public apparently thinks the nation’s once-esteemed premier law enforcement agency is acting as street-thug enforcers for the Democratic Party. The numbers are far worse when Democratic respondents are removed.
Fully three-quarters of Republicans surveyed (76.7 percent) and over half of non-affiliated respondents (53.9 percent) said Trump’s political enemies were behind the raid.
Among Democrats, bless their hearts, only about 12 percent (11.9) said the action was political, while 70.5 percent said it was the result of “an impartial justice system.”
Do you think Trump’s “political enemies” were behind the FBI raid?
(The staggering, obdurate naivete involved in a number like would be almost endearing if it weren’t infuriating – it’s like finding out 70.5 percent of kindergartners still believe in the Tooth Fairy — then finding out their parents do, too.)
Meanwhile, of course, the lords of the mainstream media can’t help but preach to the American public how the raid is the kind of Serious Matter that has them furrowing their objective brows.
In an editorial published Wednesday that appeared to be deliberately written to provide an example of what the word “risible” means in a political context, The Washington Post’s august editors decried not the precedent-setting raid on a former president’s home by armed federal agents, but the Republican Party’s outraged response.
“Republicans are proclaiming outrage over the search, arguing that no president has ever been subjected to such a proceeding. They may be right,” the Post proclaimed. “But then, no modern president has been the subject of as many and varied investigations as Mr. Trump — who invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination in one of them on Wednesday.”
Ah, so the facts that Trump has been dogged by corrupt federal investigations since he became a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton’s claim to the presidency in 2016, was dogged by a hoax of a “Russia collusion” investigation by federal agents for years of his presidency, and was subject to a sham impeachment based on the words of moles inside the National Security Council working with demonstrably dishonest lawmakers like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-8th Circle of Hell), should be considered proof that he deserved to be targeted yet again.
As for the Post’s crack about Trump’s Fifth Amendment plea in New York on Wednesday, Americans who follow the news – which presumably includes the Post’s editorial board — are well aware that Trump was answering to an investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a woman who literally campaigned on a promise to find something – anything – to nail Trump for.
Trotsky would have had more sympathetic prosecutors at a Moscow show trial.
Pretending that part didn’t matter, the Post went on to advise: “For now, the prudent reaction to the search would be to await its tangible results.”
But as some of the social media responses to the Trafalgar poll showed, that horse has left the barn.
This will backfire just like James Comey’s televised “exoneration” of Hillary Clinton. pic.twitter.com/TdtLoROwOw
— Cheryl Kane (@cherylkanere) August 11, 2022
Non affiliated can see the writing on the wall pic.twitter.com/jSMwXVTO7N
— Bobby Billy (@bobbyjoeybilly) August 10, 2022
Hell yes they just pissed off the sleeping dragon.every freedom loving patriot should be pissed and ready to fight and vote
— Caren (@Carebea20037556) August 10, 2022
Cause independents know that the fbi gestapo will one day be coming for them if we allow this police state. Libs dont care they like third world crap and dont think they will be targeted
— Steve (@Steve72354669) August 11, 2022
None of this should be surprising. Here’s a news flash for the Washington Post et al, the non-Fox News mainstream media networks, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.
The “results” of an FBI search of a Trump property will have zero credibility among a large, large portion of the American public.
According to Trafalgar, the poll was taken Tuesday and Wednesday and involved 1,095 likely voters. It had a margin of error of 2.9 percent.
Granted, it was conducted on behalf of a conservative group, Convention of States Action, but Trafalgar is a reputable polling firm. It earns an A-minus grade from the polling website FiveThirtyEight. As Trafalgar’s own site points out, it correctly called the 2016 Trump victory when few other polls would. It also called the 2018 razor-thin victory of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In other words, it brings news that’s sometimes painful for Democrats, but it has a track record.
The FBI, unfortunately, also has a track record. This is an agency that has long since lost credibility at its upper echelons thanks to the machinations of former Director James Comey and the rogues’ gallery of FBI officials behind the tarnishing of the Trump presidency.
The bureau might be trusted among the American public to find a serial killer or a bank robber – generations of television programming isn’t destroyed that easily — but the smallest hint of a political angle to any case automatically creates a groundswell of distrust.
And few things could be more political than the images of armed FBI agents raiding the home of Donald Trump, a generational figure on the country’s political stage.
What results from this fiasco could really matter?
The FBI could have found Judge Crater in Melania’s closet. It could have found Jimmy Hoffa under the bed. It could have found D.B. Cooper cooking rice with a Japanese infantryman who still didn’t know World War II had ended, and sane Americans would be casting a skeptical eye over these kinds of tactics.
This is the United States. It’s not some bush-league Third World country where taking over the capital building and an AM radio station makes you the boss. It’s not some Soviet-era oligarchy where citizens know a leadership change has taken place because state radio is playing funeral marches.
It’s filled with American citizens, who know damn well what tyranny looks like. And among other things, it looks like heavily armed government agents swarming the homes of political opponents.
This was more than a political mistake. It was a vile decision, made at the highest level of the FBI, the Justice Department and quite possibly the White House.
And, barring something truly unimaginable coming out of it — maybe a Trump plan to put Baby in the corner — it’s going to backfire on Democrats badly.
It already has.
