How Trump Won the Nomination
It might have been the indictments. But perhaps not the way you might think.
I suppose I should have a blockbuster item to kick off the new newsletter. Instead, what I have here is something a lot more speculative. But it’s important: How Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in this cycle. And while I strongly suspect I’m correct…I might even say that I’m fairly confident I’m correct…I don’t have the evidence so far. But I do think I know what happened: Trump won because his indictments changed the incentives for Republican-aligned media, shoving them forcefully back to him. And since they’re the most important party actors within the Republican Party, that was the nomination.
So let’s go over the alternatives.
To begin with, plenty of people have been saying since Trump lost in 2020 that he had a lock on the nomination as long as he wanted it: He’s just that popular among Republican voters.
It’s certainly true that Republican voters like Trump. But partisan voters always like their party’s candidates. Eighteen months ago it looked as if around a third of the party was determined to support Trump; a third was open to it but also open to other candidates; and a third was inclined to back someone else.1 And early on, as many have noted, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was competitive with Trump in national polls. In other words, Republican voters didn’t appear to be committed to Trump from the start. That makes the theory that there’s nothing to explain - Republican voters just love the guy no matter what - an idea that we have to take on faith. I can’t prove that it’s wrong, but my read of the evidence doesn’t support it.
If the indictments were a turning point from a competitive race with Trump as no more than the most likely nominee into the romp we saw in the Republican primaries and caucuses this year, then the question is what exactly happened.
Perhaps it was the voters. It’s certainly true that Republican presidential nomination voters usually choose the candidate demonstrating the greatest resentment, whether it’s Richard Nixon or Bob Dole or Trump, and perhaps the indictments made it even more obvious that Trump would once again lead in that category. And yet…it’s hard for me to buy that Republicans in winter 2022-2023 were not yet convinced that Trump would be filled with seething resentment, and that the indictments clinched that point for him.
And if that’s the case, then it seems unlikely that the shifts towards Trump from party actors in general, and Republican-aligned media specifically, were caused by voter demand. Instead, as is usually the case, voters were responding to the information that party actors and the campaign provided for them.
So what happened? Here’s what I think.
The trick is to think of Republican-aligned media, from Fox News and the other cable networks to conservative talk radio to web sites and podcasts and all the rest, as both party actors and as mass media, with all the incentives that the latter have. And for well over a century, if there’s one thing we know about mass media it’s that they absolutely love a high-profile trial.
And with good reason! Trials provide hours and hours of ready-made, easy (and usually inexpensive) to cover material. They have an easy to understand story line; even when the facts and law are complicated, it’s still a win vs. lose story that anyone can follow. And trials, from Lindberg to O.J., are proven ratings gold. Even pre-trial motions are great, with a clear Trump Wins! or Trump Was Robbed! story.
In other words, once GOP-aligned media realized that they had trials coming, they knew they had programming they would want to exploit.2 Lots of programming. Predictable (mostly), steady, programming.
And that, in turn, meant that they couldn’t continue flirting with DeSantis, or (as had happened in 2016 and 2012 and 2008) build up one after another candidate. There were going to be trials, these outlets were going to cover them extensively, and given the choices available it was clear that Trump would have to be the hero and the prosecutors would be cast as the villians. The other Republican presidential candidates were, from that point on, simply a distraction.
Other party actors? Of course, many Republican politicians, policy professionals, and campaign professionals were less than enthusiastic about backing the loser of the 2020 election, who was also the party leader for the 2018 defeat and the 2022 disappointment. But it’s one thing to be unenthusiastic; it’s another to take on talk radio hosts and risk getting blackballed from the cable networks that their voters watch.
As far as voters are concerned, it’s hardly surprising that they went along with Trump-dominated Republican-aligned media. After all, the premise here is that most of them were willing to support him all along; the only question is whether they were also open to other options. Once he dominated the information environment, they were going to back him.
Is that what happened? There’s some clear evidence. Fox News had avoided Trump for months, but invited him back soon after the indictments. The early media-led surge for DeSantis ended, and was replaced by Trump, not any of the other candidates. At least, I think that’s what happened. Even if so, that doesn’t prove that it was because they loved the prospect of several trials. But it does appear that something changed, and it changed right as the indictments came down.
That said, so far I haven’t seen any revealing comments from GOP-aligned media that might shed light on what really happened. So there’s plenty of scope for further evidence, one way or another. All I can say is that the logic for it seems right.
I believe that there was a Natalie Jackson item around then that suggested those three categories, but alas I can’t locate it now and I could have the numbers and even the attribution wrong. So blame me for it if I’m wrong, credit her if appropriate, and read her stuff because she’s terrific.
Didn’t they realize that the indictments were coming? Here it’s another big concept that matters: The closed conservative information loop. Within that loop, it appears - and again, this is at least somewhat speculative - that the conventional wisdom was that Trump had done nothing wrong, and the investigations would no doubt fizzle out just as others had done before.