Former Reagan speechwriter and conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan has for years watched supporters of former President Donald Trump stick with him through countless scandals -- but she thinks this time may be different.
In her latest column, Noonan writes that the "breathtaking" Trump behavior exposed by special counsel Jack Smith's indictment is a step beyond bragging about grabbing women by their genitals, ripping off Trump University students, trying to shake down Ukraine for dirt on political opponents, or inciting a deadly riot at the United States Capitol building.
In particular, she says that Trump supporters with a reverence for national security could be particularly turned off by the indictment's revelations.
"They don’t care if he’s an abusive predator of women -- again, extraneous, old news," she writes. "But endangering our national security, including our nuclear secrets? That is another matter."
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She then outlines the sheer reckless selfishness of Trump's actions in which he thought that nuclear secrets were his personal property to show off to Mar-a-Lago guests as he wished.
Any Trump supporter with a modicum of honesty, Noonan says, would have to think about finding another candidate to support in the 2024 election.
"Mar-a-Lago isn’t secure," she concludes. "Those documents didn’t belong there. It is a danger to our country that they were. This story will do Mr. Trump no good with his supporters. It will hurt him—maybe not a lot but some, maybe not soon but in time. I mean the quiet Trump supporters, not big mouths and people making money on the game, but honest people."
