Days after former President Donald Trump claimed he was going to be arrested over his hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, it still hasn’t happened. NBC’s political director Chuck Todd says that’s part of the former president’s “media savvy” when it comes to legal trouble.
“Donald Trump manufactured a story and most people fell for it,” Todd said on GBH’s Boston Public Radio Thursday. “And it [the arrest] wasn’t nearly as close as everybody made it seem. It’s really frustrating to watch this when you know what he’s doing, you see it happening in real time.”
The scandal results from adult film star Daniels’ plans to sell her story about a 2006 affair with Trump, a relationship that Trump and his allies have repeatedly denied. Manhattan prosecutors are investigating a potentially illegal $130,000 payment to Daniels to keep the story quiet in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Indicting a former president would be unprecedented in the nation’s history.
Trump turned to social media over the weekend to tell his supporters to protest his arrest, which he said would happen Tuesday.
“One thing he is is media savvy about his legal problems,” Todd said, pointing to multiple criminal investigations the former president is staring down. “The entire premise of Donald Trump’s existence is about escaping a legal problem. That’s how he has lived his life for the last 40 years, starting with the bankruptcies.”
But for Todd, the uproar over Trump’s apparently imminent arrest did prove one thing.
“If he is living and breathing — and running — he is going to win this nomination,” Todd predicted.
He pointed to Republican politicians who questioned the legitimacy of the investigation into the former president. Florida governor and likely 2024 campaign rival Ron DeSantis insulted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over a “manufactured circus,” and three House Republicans demanded that Bragg disclose documents detailing his criminal investigation.
“This was a fascinating power play by Trump,” Todd said. “For a man who is politically extraordinarily weak with the middle of the electorate ... it was an impressive show of influential bullying power.”
Who holds sway in the 2024 election is already top of mind on both sides of the aisle. Some are casting doubt on Vice President Kamala Harris’ political power and whether she should be on the Democratic ticket again in 2024.
Looking back on the 2020 Democratic primary that catapulted Harris into the spotlight, Todd said she blemished her credibility by being inconsistent on the issues — most infamously, on Medicare for All.
“She didn’t know whether she was going to run as a progressive or run as a moderate. And she was struggling. She was trying to run in both lanes,” Todd said.
“Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, knows exactly who she is,” he continued. “I think Elizabeth Warren’s problem as a candidate was: she came across as inaccessible. ... It very much felt like she was a podium candidate, and she was a lecturer, rather than in the middle of it all.”
After voters elected two of the oldest-ever presidents in Trump and Biden, Todd thinks that age would be a problem for Warren if she tried to run for president in 2028, following Biden’s reelection campaign in 2024. Warren would be 79 years old during the 2028 general election.
“It may punish her, fairly or unfairly,” the “Meet the Press” host said. “One thing you can count on America doing is overcorrecting on these things. If you told me in the next 10 years we elect two of our youngest presidents in the last 50 years or so, it wouldn’t shock me.”
