The charges against former President Donald Trump are giving a major boost to his bid to return to the White House, according to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
“They’re forcing Republicans to choose between corruption and Trump,” he told The Epoch Times, noting that even Trump’s Republican critics, such as Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush haven’t been impressed with the case.
“Trump is stronger today than he was a month ago,” said Gingrich, a contributor to The Epoch Times.
Recent poll data and political analysis largely lean in favor of Gingrich’s prediction.
Trump has raised $8 million in the four days after a New York grand jury in a deep blue county indicted him on allegations relating to his alleged role in a hush money payment to adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels. A Yahoo! News-YouGov poll taken immediately after the indictment found 57 percent of respondents supporting Trump over his leading potential rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had 31 percent of the hypothetical votes. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on April 3, 48 percent of Republican respondents backed Trump as their party’s presidential nominee, up from 44 percent in a March 14-20 poll.
The 34 counts of felony charges brought about by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg made Trump the first former president to face criminal prosecution. Trump on April 4 pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The unprecedented indictment has united all major Republican 2024 hopefuls to rally behind Trump, and Gingrich—who says the case from Bragg is no more than a “publicity stunt”—said the prosecution has made it “very hard for anybody to attack him, because it sounds like you’re siding with the corrupt establishment.”
Trump, Gingrich said, will likely become the Republican nominee and “Biden’s policy failures are going to make it more likely that Trump will win the election.”
“He’ll be the first American President to lose an election and come back and win a second time after Grover Cleveland,” who won the presidency in 1884 and then again in 1892, Gingrich said.
By Eva Fu
