'An indictment might help' Trump become even more popular with GOP base: conservative pundit

Normally, a candidate facing a criminal indictment would see their political prospects drastically reduced.

Conservative pundit Rich Lowry, however, thinks that the Republican base might love former President Donald Trump even more if he gets indicted as part of the multiple criminal investigations he's now facing.

As Lowry writes in his latest Politico essay, Trump has long trained his voters to see both him and themselves as perpetual victims of a corrupt elite who are conspiring to stop them from making America great again.

"The way Trump uses victimhood accounts for his bizarre ability to reverse the usual political physics of events," he writes. "Until Trump came along, having the FBI search your residence as part of a federal investigation would have been a major blow, if not the end of the target’s presidential ambitions. It helped Trump. An indictment might help him (at least in the short term) even more."

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Lowry notes, of course, that there is rich irony to Trump supporters' belief that he is both perpetually victimized and that he also has superhuman powers that make him single-handedly capable of taking on a cabal of nefarious globalists.

In fact, the only way Lowry thinks this spell can be broken is if another Republican, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, beats him for the nomination.

"The ultimate indignity would, of course, be if Republicans denied him the nomination," he concludes. "At that point, Trump would transform from I’ll-fight-and-die-for-you victim to unadorned loser."