The walls are closing in on Trump on numerous legal and political fronts
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump famously joked that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK."
"It's, like, incredible."
Considering the long list of past and present legal trouble that have dogged the former president in recent years, It’s perhaps almost as remarkable that he remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican Party nomination.
Trump is now facing separate grand jury investigations in New York (Stormy Daniels) and Georgia (election interference), along with Department of Justice probes over the handling of classified documents and his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
And although Trump remains ahead in most polls, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is likely to present a formidable challenge to the former president, is garnering support from many former Trump loyalists.
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Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump official, on Thursday launched a super PAC called “Never Back Down” that aims to draft DeSantis to run for president next year, the report said. Cuccinelli under Trump served as the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service’s acting director.
The Washington Post in an article titled “Trump in growing legal and political peril ahead of 2024” put the challenges facing the former president this way:
“Trump — who stoked an insurrection trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and is running again in 2024 — finds himself in growing peril, both legal and political."
“Multiple investigations into him and his actions are entering advanced stages, all while many in the Republican Party — in private conservations and public declarations — are increasingly trying to find an alternative to him.”
The combined challenges facing Trump are enough to leave a prominent Republican operative questioning how much more the former president can take.
“The theory that Trump defined and validated throughout his political career has been the 5th Avenue Republican theory, which is that he could do anything — he could shoot anybody on 5th Avenue and they would stick with him,” Kevin Madden, a senior adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign told The Post.
“That’s going to be put to the test, but so far it has proven to be an enduring principle.”
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