Last week, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes, including tax evasion and making false statements to a bank. In his guilty plea, Cohen admitted to making illegal campaign payments in coordination with Trump and at the direction of Trump. Despite Trump’s personal lawyer for over a decade, admitting that Trump directed him to violate campaign finance laws, so far there has been no impact on Trump’s approval rating.
According to NBC News/Wall Street Journal Polling, days before Cohen pleaded guilty to committing crimes in coordination with Trump, the President’s approval rating was 46% among registered voters. The same poll conducted in the days following Cohen’s guilty plea found that 44% of registered voters approved of Trump’s job performance. The change in Trump’s job approval is not statistically significant because it is within the polls’ margin of error.
Therefore, it appears those hoping Cohen implicating Trump in illegal activity might boost Democrats’ prospects in the midterms, need to find a new strategy. The same “teflon Don” that was written about extensively during the 2016 presidential campaign appears to be going strong. As Trump famously said to a group of supporters in Iowa in January 2016, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." Just as there was no bad news that could takedown candidate Trump, there appears to be no bad news that can takedown President Trump.
The durability of Trump’s core supporters is astonishing. Is there anything that could convince the Trump faithful that he should no longer have the privilege of serving as President of the United States?
One might reasonably assume that if the president was changed with a crime, even loyal Trump supporters might begin to question their allegiance to the president. However, the prevailing view among legal experts is that the president is immune from prosecution so long as he is in office. Furthermore, even the possibility of whether the Constitution allows for the indictment of a sitting president has been widely questioned.
Consequently, those running in opposition to Trump’s policies, must have an agenda they are campaigning on besides just impeaching Trump. Democrats need to lay out for the American people what policies they plan on embracing and will work to pass if they are able to take back control of the House.
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