Biden Beats Trump – But Barely – in Latest Poll

A new Quinnipiac poll is offering damning news to Donald Trump: The majority of Americans think he should not even be allowed to run for president if criminal charges are filed against him.

That majority, 57%, includes nearly nine in ten Democrats (88%), more than half (55%) of independents, and even close to one-quarter (23%) of Republicans.

“Yes, say Americans, it was all about him and not the country’s well-being when Trump proclaimed he was targeted for arrest,” says Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy. “And, yes he should be forever banished from office if he is charged as a criminal.”

The poll serves up even more bad news for the ex-president. Despite the right’s attempts to paint Trump’s alleged hush money payoff as a mere bookkeeping issue, or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg‘s case against him, as one GOP lawmaker said recently, “wrongful persecution,” the majority of Americans – 55% – say the accusations against Trump are “serious.”

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Conservatives’ attempts to paint the investigation as political, however, appear to be working, at least among Republicans and independents.

More than nine out of ten Republicans (93%) and 70% of independents say they believe the investigation is motivated by politics, while two-thirds of Democrats (66%) say it is motived by the law.

Still more troubling news for the Trump team.

Exposing the growing partisan divide across the country, the majority of Americans, nearly six in ten (58%) say Trump has had a mainly negative impact on the Republican Party.

But inside the GOP, the view is far different.

The vast majority of Republicans (72%) say Trump has had a positive impact. Just 21% say he has had a negative impact. (The poll does not appear to take into account former Republicans who left the GOP because of Trump.)

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Echoing the “positive impact” they believe Trump has had on their party, 79% of registered Republicans say they are supporters of his MAGA movement. The poll does not appear to define “support,” nor the various “levels” of support some Republicans now express, including “ultra MAGA.”

Meanwhile, when offered a choice between Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, or 11 other Republican candidates or potential candidates, Trump gets a plurality of voters: 47%. DeSantis gets one-third, 33%. Pence gets just 5%, and Haley – who has already officially declared she is running – gets even less, at 4%.

There’s little change when GOP voters are asked who they would choose in a head-to-head matchup between Trump and DeSantis. Trump gets 52%, DeSantis 42%.

And even more bad news for Team Trump: In a head-to-head matchup among registered voters, President Joe Biden would beat Donald Trump, although by a slim margin: 48% to 46%.

There is one piece of good news for the DeSantis campaign, which technically does not exist yet. DeSantis would beat Biden, also by a slim margin: 48% to 46%.

But some believe DeSantis will not run, especially given his poor campaign pre-launch. Others, like top Trump critic and former Republican George Conway, say DeSantis shouldn’t even bother.

“It makes no sense for DeSantis to run this cycle,” Conway said Thursday morning, unrelated to the Quinnipiac poll. “To beat Trump, DeSantis would have to go hammer and tong in a one-on-one race against him. DeSantis isn’t capable of that, it isn’t going to be one-on-one, and even if he were and it was, DeSantis would end up alienating a good chunk of the GOP base. And no matter what, Trump would try to destroy the GOP if it ever became clear he wouldn’t get the nomination. Trump would run as a third-party candidate to take the GOP nominee down. The smart play for DeSantis is to fleece donors by pretending to run, and pocket the cash for 2028, when he’ll still be only 49.”

Republicans are stepping up their war against Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg as he considers charges against Donald Trump.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has already called for committees to delve into Bragg’s investigation of Trump’s hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels, and GOP lawmakers are weighing subpoenas for the county prosecutor to testify about his probe, reported The Daily Beast.

“It is pretty clearly a wrongful persecution of a free American citizen who happens to be the former president of the United States,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) told the website. “Because of those circumstances, I think it’s appropriate for Congress to inquire into what drove that decision making process for Bragg.”

Higgins suggested that Republicans would coordinate their timing on a potential Bragg subpoena with the former president’s legal team to avoid interfering with their defense.

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“[A subpoena] would be an interesting conversation amongst my colleagues,” he said, “[but] the appropriate timing of something like that should include consideration whether or not that case is moving towards permanent closure, and allow that to happen.”

However, other Republicans are pressing for a more extreme response to Bragg’s grand jury investigation, which some of them have suggested is funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

“It’s time to arrest Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for prosecutorial misconduct after hiding hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Bragg is on the verge of indicting an innocent former President and top Presidential candidate against the opposing ruling party. Bragg is breaking the law and trying to incite civil unrest with his Soros funded political war. Hold him accountable!”

Republican senators don’t have the power to go after Bragg as the minority party, and some House Republicans seem to think their pressure has already had an effect on Bragg’s probe.

“But you know, [Bragg] seems like he’s kind of, you know, maybe, I don’t know, maybe backed off a little bit,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). “But we’ll have to see, we’ll see what he does.”

A court reform expert and progressive political activist is blasting both the U.S. Supreme Court and the spouse of one of its justices after a bombshell Washington Post article revealed how Ginni Thomas headed a secretive right-wing organization funded through a web of dark money with the goal of waging a culture war against the left.

Thomas, a Washington insider for decades, a well-known right-wing lobbyist and conspiracy theorist who had unprecedented access to the Trump White House and Oval Office, just happens to be the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Demand Justice founder Brian Fallon warned the Roberts Supreme Court has a reputation of “behaving unethically,” handing down “questionable” decisions, being “overtaken with scandal,” and “riddled with ethical conflicts and influence peddling.”

“Research that my group has done, we’ve noticed that part of what is animating this downward shift in opinion of the court is not just the highly unpopular, substantive rulings that are coming out of the court – and that’s saying something because they’re pretty unpopular,” Fallon, the former Clinton campaign national press secretary and former DOJ director of public affairs, told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, “but it’s also this idea that the court is behaving unethically, and that it’s become overtaken with scandal.”

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“There’s a feeling that not only is it reaching decisions that are questionable and unpopular, but it’s also reaching them through illicit means – that the majority that Republicans have now on the Supreme Court, that 6 to 3 majority, was gained through illicit means, and that the way it’s going about its business of hearing cases is just sort of riddled with ethical conflicts and influence peddling.”

Fallon warned that The Washington Post’s report on Ginni Thomas, “I think, would just further that narrative in the public’s mind.”

Wallace, pointing to The Post’s reporting, blasted Thomas’ “demented approach to ethics and transparency.”

“The piece about funding is so stunning to me, because it, you know, over here on Earth One, you would do the opposite, right?” Wallace posited. “If there were a nonprofit that involved the spouse of a Supreme Court justice, you would take the path that would bring about more disclosure, more transparency. Ginni Thomas does the opposite. She basically buries and hides the funding through a workaround that may or may not be legal, it certainly isn’t ethical or transparent.”

After criticizing Ginni Thomas for lobbying on issues Clarence Thomas could or does make decisions on, Fallon criticized her for the secretive organization she was heading, which she said was going after the left’s “cultural Marxism.”

Calling Thomas a “fringe figure,” Fallon observed, “the people that she brought together for this nonprofit that received $600,000 was a rogue’s gallery of people that do not belong in polite society in Washington, D.C.”

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“You have the head of Project Veritas who’s been criminally prosecuted for the shady activities of that group,” Fallon alleged.

He also pointed to the right wing pro-Trump group Turning Point USA’s founder, Charlie Kirk.

“These are people that say outrageous things that help provoke conspiracy theories that contributed to the riots to try to overturn the government. And Ginni Thomas is in league with all of them.”

“This should be shocking and appalling to your average Member of Congress on both sides of the aisle, and we don’t see any movement from Republicans in the House to do anything in terms of an ethics bill, but it should be 100% uncontroversial at this point, to impose a mandatory code of ethics on the Supreme Court so that Clarence Thomas has to account for his wife’s activities more so than he does have to right now.”

Watch Fallon below or at this link:

“Part of what is animating this downward shift in the opinion of the court is not just the highly unpopular substantive rulings that are coming out of the court…but it is also this idea that the court is behaving unethically” – @brianefallon w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/SqSW7EwDvc

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) March 29, 2023