Donald Trump’s Amazing Year – 2024 Election – Newsweek

Overall, Donald Trump has had a pretty good 2023.

Despite his enormous legal troubles, including four criminal indictments, the former president has made it through a roller coaster of a year in some ways stronger than when it began.

A year ago, Trump had just announced an early bid for the GOP's presidential nomination, a campaign that many doubted would be successful in a crowded field that included a highly anticipated run from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But Trump's Republican rivals, including DeSantis, have failed to catch up to his popularity among voters, and Trump's 2024 candidacy only gained momentum as the pile of legal actions against him grew.

His chances of beating President Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch have also improved from a year ago, thanks to stubborn high prices and the ongoing border crisis, with the latter becoming such a headache for Biden that the Democrats are considering reviving Trump's immigration policies. Biden's indicted son Hunter has inadvertently given Trump a boost, handing the GOP megastar fodder for his attacks on his successor as the indictment of a public figure, now seemingly normalized, has hit the president and his family personally.

Trump saw other victories in 2023 as well, including his reinstatement to Twitter under Elon Musk's ownership, as well as to Facebook and Instagram after a two-year ban.

Here's a look back on the former president's tumultuous year:

Trump spent 2023 fielding lawsuits and criminal charges left and right.

In March, he became the first former president to ever be charged with a crime when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced that Trump had been indicted on 34 felony counts related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. Trump was accused by Bragg of falsifying business records with the explicit intent of covering up crimes, which bumped up a misdemeanor charge to a felony.

That indictment was followed by three more: two federal indictments and one out of Fulton County, Georgia. Special counsel Jack Smith's two investigations indicted Trump in June over alleged mishandling of classified documents and, in August, for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Two weeks after his third indictment, Trump was charged with violating Georgia's racketeering laws, along with 18 co-defendants. The sweeping Racketeer Inuenced Corrupt Organization indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis concerned attempts to overturn the 2020 election's results in her state.

The outcomes of those indictments are not certain, but Trump's court calendar is beginning to fill up with tentative dates. His federal election interference trial is scheduled a day before Super Tuesday, March 4, pending a decision on his immunity claim, and his Manhattan trial in the hush money case is slated for March 25.

The Mar-a-Lago classified documents trial is set for May 20 and the Georgia RICO trial is scheduled to begin August 5, less than three weeks after the Republican National Convention, where the party's presidential nominee will be named.

While none of these cases spell good news for Trump, he and the Republican Party have still benefited politically from them. A Newsweek analysis found that Trump saw a bump in the polls following his first indictment. Even though the uptick wasn't repeated after the other three indictments, those charges did not impede his steady climb among GOP primary voters. The indictments also furthered Republican claims that the Department of Justice was being weaponized against conservatives, a sentiment that has struck a chord among Republican voters.

"Any time they file an indictment we go way up in the polls," Trump said before his fourth indictment during a Republican Party dinner in Alabama. "We need one more indictment to close out this election. One more indictment and this election is closed out."

Trump did, however, suffer several major legal defeats in his civil lawsuits this year. In May, a Manhattan jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store change room in the mid-1990s. She was awarded $5 million in damages. Trump, who denies any wrongdoing, is appealing the decision.

In September, New York Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud related to his real estate empire and ordered that some of his companies be removed from his control and dissolved. The order was seen as a large win for a longtime Trump nemesis, New York State Attorney General Letitia James.

The trial in the $250 million civil lawsuit is expected to wrap up next month and could result in a verdict that would bar Trump from running any business in New York state.

Trump's lead in the Republican primary race is even greater than it was at the beginning of 2023.

FiveThirtyEight's tracker shows the former president with 61 percent support as of Thursday, a 50-point advantage over the rest of the pack. In January, Trump was seeing only 45 percent support and was only 10 points ahead of DeSantis.

The Florida governor did not announce his 2024 campaign until May and is polling at 11 percent support among GOP voters. Trump has also managed to remain the overwhelming front-runner despite his refusal to participate in any of the four Republican presidential debates held this year.

The greatest candidate threat to emerge against Trump has not been DeSantis but former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who has caught up with DeSantis. Nonetheless, she remains 50 points behind Trump nationally. Haley's strongest performance is expected to be in New Hampshire, which will follow Iowa in the primary season voting and where Trump's lead over Haley is a narrow 18 points.

Trump is also polling well in a hypothetical race against Biden. The latest data from Real Clear Politics shows that Trump leads Biden by 2 points and that his lead is even greater in key battleground states like Georgia, Michigan and Arizona, where Biden trails him by 5 points, and in Nevada, where Biden is behind by 4 points. Biden won all four states in the 2020 election.

Biden's support for Israel during its war with Hamas has also cost him support from young voters, who have historically voted Democratic and were credited with helping Biden secure his 2020 victory. Polls have increasingly shown a positive trend for Trump among voters under 30.

Last week, a national survey released by The New York Times/Siena College found Trump leading Biden 49 percent to 43 percent among Americans between 18 and 29 years olda 6-point advantage that's enough to give Trump a 2-point lead among registered voters overall.

Less than four years ago, 2020 exit polls showed Biden defeating Trump by 24 points among voters under 30. Just over a year ago, that advantage was 21 points.

Biden is not only losing voters with his response to the Israel-Hamas war. Overall, the president's 2023 has arguably been not as strong as Trump's.

Although Biden spent the first two years of his presidency signing several significant pieces of bipartisan legislation into law, appointing his first Supreme Court justice and celebrating the Democrats' better-than-expected midterms performance, his approval rating in 2023 took a toll from the public's perception of the economy and the border crisis.

Biden has spent the past year touting his economic agenda, dubbed Bidenomics; the unemployment rate's drop to a pre-pandemic, five-decade low; and the sharp curb in inflation, from June 2022's 9.1 percent peak to last month's 3.1 percent. But many Americans say they have yet to feel the economic reliefsomething that clearly frustrated the president as he ripped into the media coverage of the economy earlier this week.

"Start reporting it the right way," the president told White House reporters on Sunday.

Confidence in the economy has improved over the past year, but it remains in negative territory and is still a pressing issue for many voters. Last week, Gallup found that only 22 percent of Americans see current economic conditions in the U.S. as excellent or good, while nearly 7 in 10 Americans say the economy is getting worse.

Even though there have been improvements, 14 percent of voters say the economy in general is the most important problem facing the country, and 12 percent point to inflation specifically, making economic concerns the No. 3 concern among voters.

The government/poor leadership and immigration remain the top two concerns, with 16 percent of Americans citing each. Immigration has plagued the Biden administration since the beginning of his presidency, when an influx of migrants came to the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the 2023 fiscal year, 2.5 million migrants crossed the bordera historic high that topped the record set in the prior year. As some Republican governors deployed an offensive response, sending migrants to Democratic-led cities like New York City and Washington, D.C., the mayors of those so-called sanctuary cities have ramped up pressure on Biden to address the increase in asylum seekers.

Multiple reports have indicated that the White House is now prepared to implement border policies that mirror those under the Trump administration. These include a possible revival of the pandemic-era Title 42 policy that Biden tried to lift in 2022, a potential expansion of immigration enforcement inside the U.S., and changes to legal standards that could make it harder for people to get asylum.

Personally, Biden has faced a barrage of attacks from GOP critics over his son Hunter, who was indicted twice this year on gun and tax-related charges. Hunter has pleaded not guilty to the gun charges and is set to be arraigned on the tax charges in January. His indictments have helped somewhat to normalize Trump's indictments while also casting a shadow over his father. A CNN poll from September found that 55 percent of Americans think Biden acted inappropriately in connection with the Justice Department's investigation of his son's alleged crimes.

But Biden has remained undeterred in his efforts to win reelection, telling reporters earlier this month that even though he's not the only Democrat who could beat Trump if he wins the Republican nomination, "I will defeat him."

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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Donald Trump's Amazing Year - 2024 Election - Newsweek