MAGA's core message is being disproved by Trump's commanding primary lead: conservative

Donald Trump draws his supporters into his personal legal travails by claiming his problems are, in fact, theirs and that he is suffering for their sins, a conservative columnist wrote Tuesday.

And they seem to believe him.

As improbable as it may be, that notion has taken hold among many Republican voters, even in deep-red states, who believe the twice-impeached, twice-indicted former president is all that's standing between themselves and political and personal ruin. And Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg doesn't see that changing any time soon.

But the fact that Trump is so far in the lead disproves that core message, Goldberg wrote.

"This alone undermines the MAGA base’s argument for supporting Trump," he wrote.

"If the Republican establishment forces were as powerful as Trump and his voters think, they’d be able to do something about it. If the Deep State were half as formidable as they think, Trump would never have been president in the first place," wrote the conservative Goldberg.

"But large segments of the GOP suffer from the delusion that they are victims of the ruling classes and that the woke left is running everything — or will — if Trump doesn’t stop them."

Trump has run up a commanding lead over his Republican challengers, and historically no primary candidate ahead by at least 20 points this early has lost the nomination, but the ex-president holds some unprecedented disadvantages heading into 2024.

"A former president with multiple criminal indictments despised by a quarter of his party almost as much as he’s loved by a third of it," Goldberg wrote. "You could argue he’s running with an incumbent president’s lead, but for an incumbent president, his lead would be disastrously narrow ... For those desperate for a Republican nominee other than Trump, hoping voters will change their minds seems scary. But that’s democracy for you."