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Was Announcing His Candidacy So Early In The Indictment Season A Miscalculation?*
One week after the 2022 midterms, Trump declared his candidacy for 2024, among the earliest such announcements ever by a presidential candidate. Even before the mid-terms he suggested an early target date to declare. Some on the right thought — feared — he might announce on the eve of the mid-terms. Trump wanted to ride and take full credit for the predicted “red tsunami.” He would blame others if mid-terms history did not repeat.
The reason for declaring his candidacy and beginning his campaign a full two years out, however, was no mystery.
A formal candidacy, he calculated, would lend credibility to his false claim that the then criminal investigations were not evidence-based and were entirely political, that he was the victim of a weaponized Department of Justice deployed by an incumbent political opponent to defeat him. And he hoped that pressure on Merrick Garland would slow the investigations and stall any criminal prosecutions until he won the 2024 election. He could then shut down his justice department’s investigations — there would be no prosecutions of a sitting president, in any event — and self-pardon if he thought it necessary, assuming that’s a thing.
He is running to stay out of prison. Maureen Dowd said: