Donald Trump addresses crowd in Sioux City, Iowa in 2016. (Shutterstock.com)
MSNBC's John Heilemann said "no sane politician" wants to go on record defending Donald Trump now that a federal indictment spelled out the serious allegations against him.
The former president's Republican allies have been rallying around him since the FBI executed a search warrant last August at Mar-a-Lago and found hundreds of classified documents he had taken from the White House, but the "Morning Joe" political analyst said their defense has been more muted since special counsel Jack Smith revealed evidence to support 37 criminal charges.
"When you saw when Trump started to get in this trouble when the FBI went down to Mar-a-Lago, the whole party, the FBI are in Melania's bedroom, according to Trump, all rallying around him," Heilemann said. "It's easy to rally around Trump as long as the question of what the charges are is hypothetical. Every step from then to now has gotten worse for Trump up to the worst day in his life when the indictment came down. It took them 24 hours to absorb the indictment, the depth of it. It's now been fully absorbed. He is still the most powerful force and has the most loyalty, except Chris Christie. Everyone else understands the nature of this electorate will not do that."
Former vice president Mike Pence is a clear example of this new dynamic, Heilemann said, where Republicans say the charges are serious and concerning but criticize the Department of Justice for politicized overreach.
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"Like the pick-and-roll, this is the Pence shuffle, try to find a position that is not standing next to Donald Trump, defending him on these facts," Heilemann said. "That is a crushing position to be in a general election standing up there with a convicted felon on these counts and having video of you saying the president was right, he didn't do anything wrong. That's a position that no sane politician that will want to be in."
Host Joe Scarborough said that defending Trump would eventually come back to haunt 2024 presidential candidates.
"A year from now, that is in a split screen with Donald Trump being led off in handcuffs," Scarborough said, "that's something no politician wants to be a part of."
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