Current indications suggest that Democrats are not going to like how the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s home is going to play out for them electorally. They are already looking at a thorough shellacking.
With President Joe Biden’s approval ratings still floating in the toilet and their apparent inability to address the problems everyday Americans are facing, it would take an entire miracle for them to hold on to both chambers of Congress. Now that the Bureau has made its move, which many suspect is an effort to damage Trump, a new survey suggests that the conservative base is even more energized and ready to show up at the polls in November.
RedState’s Nick Arama reported on a Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action poll conducted after the raid which should that most voters – regardless of political affiliation – are more motivated to vote after the debacle. But the difference between Republican and Democratic voters is quite telling.
The first question asked whether the “FBI raid on President Trump increase[s] your motivation to vote in the 2022 election.” The majority of Republican respondents (70.4%) answered in the affirmative. Among Democrats, 55.2% also said they are more motivated to vote in November.
This is not good news for Democrats.
There was already speculation that the raid would only mobilize conservatives in response to the politically-motivated effort to smear – or even indict – President Trump. This poll demonstrates that this speculation was on point.
Even now, social media is rife with high-profile conservatives taking issue with the raid and questioning the impetus behind it. Here are but a few examples:
I waited two days for my government to justify an FBI raid on a former president's home. I think that was fair-minded of me.
No justification has been offered.
The presumption of innocence (of the government and FBI) can now be removed from the option set.
Phase 2 begins.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 11, 2022
Obama's wingman, @EricHolder looks to have been on the illegal Mar a Lago raid.
Here he is just 72 hours BEFORE the FBI bust into President Trump's home. pic.twitter.com/NGFoPYK9H4
— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) August 11, 2022
The National Archive wasn’t one bit concerned about Hillary Clinton’s violations & the FBI didn’t raid her home to retrieve the secret server from her basement BUT Mar-a-Lago was searched for 9 hours with zero oversight…
Nope, nothing weird about that at all. pic.twitter.com/PfUMgTGVuu
— Tricia Flanagan (R-NJ) (@NewDayForNJ) August 11, 2022
"Bullshit – there is no way that's what they were searching for…This is about January 6, and the never-ending desire to get Donald Trump on something…"@MegynKelly on the FBI raid at Trump's home. Watch below, and download the FULL show here:https://t.co/F96HgI7HIW pic.twitter.com/s5pA45Vxc5
— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) August 10, 2022
The left was already set to lose big in the upcoming congressional elections. It would not be a stretch to say that this raid likely seals their fate. The fact that so many Democrats are not even bothering to question the wisdom of raiding a former president over National Archives documents only makes it worse for them.
Nevertheless, we can expect them to still try to leverage the raid to further their propaganda efforts. Members of the activist media are spinning hard to influence public opinion on the matter. During a recent panel, CNN’s S.E. Cupp dubbed the raid as a sign of a “healthy” Justice Department and FBI. She said:
“Let me finish. If you didn’t leave the White House with classified documents you don’t have to worry that the FBI is coming to raid your home office. I think most people think holding even the president accountable is good. That’s a good thing. That’s a sign of a healthy – a healthy Justice Department, and a healthy FBI. I think this Trump world talking point that the FBI is corrupt and the Justice Department is coming for average Americans.”
In a guest essay for the New York Times, author Caroline Frederickson claimed that “many in the G.O.P. establishment” are backing Trump “not necessarily because they truly believe him to be innocent but because being seen to be persecuted by federal officers is now a badge of honor in the Republican Party.”
She defended the Justice Department, insisting that the raid was important for preserving the Presidential Records Act:
There is little doubt that the most senior Justice Department officials, in addition to the federal judge who granted the search warrant, sanctioned the search, weighing the obvious sensitivity of raiding a former president’s property — and the inevitable political blowback they would face — against the possibility that whatever they ended up seizing would contain evidence of a crime. One can only imagine that failure to enforce an egregious violation of the Presidential Records Act would mean that the law is no longer enforceable.
At this point, no level of spin is going to unring this bell. The DOJ went after the former president and most of his supporters believe the action was not motivated by a desire for justice but a need to harm a political opponent. They have valid reasons for believing this.
Unless the FBI found evidence of an offense that is far more severe than Trump holding on to documents after he is out of office, the blowback will probably even continue into the 2024 election. The former president and conservative media will not let this fiasco drop out of the public consciousness. To put it simply, Biden’s DOJ may have made its biggest mistake and the consequences will not be pretty.
