If Democrats had hoped that the criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump would stymie his 2024 re-election campaign with distractions and scare off donors and supporters, it would appear that they were sorely mistaken.
Per a Truth Social post from Trump following his arraignment on Tuesday, his campaign raised roughly $10 million since the indictment was first announced last week, Breitbart reported.
At the same time, the former president has also seen his support from voters rise substantially in most of the polls over that same period.
On Wednesday, Trump posted to his Truth Social account, "As much as I can enjoy a day like Tuesday, where the Radical Left Lunatics, Maniacs, and Perverts had me Indicted and ARRESTED for no reason whatsoever, there was no Crime, it was an unbelievable experience, perhaps the Best Day in History for somebody who had just suffered Unjustifiable Indictment!"
"My Poll Numbers have never been better, almost $10 Million was raised for the Campaign and, the day was capped off with a very important Speech. If we don’t stop the Radical Left, America is DEAD!" he added.
Breitbart noted that the claim that nearly $10 million had been donated to Trump's campaign in the span of less than a week since the grand jury empaneled by Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg voted to criminally indict Trump last Thursday followed the assertion that around $4 million had been raised in just the first 24 hours alone following that announcement.
Breitbart reported separately over the weekend that Jason Miller, a senior adviser to former President Trump, revealed that nearly a quarter of the initial surge of $4 million in funds raised following the indictment came from first-time donors.
In an interview with "Breitbart News Saturday," Miller predicted that the Democratic-backed indictment would likely "backfire" and may, in fact, already be doing so, as they were "pretty much assuring that President Trump will have the Republican nomination but they’re also firing up his base and independents."
"This is so obviously political, so I think it’s gonna backfire on the Democrats in a big way," he continued.
"In the first 48 hours after this indictment was announced, President Trump’s campaign raised $4 million just in a 24-hour period," Miller stated. "Notably of those contributions, a quarter of them -- a fourth of them -- were from people who’ve never given money into President Trump before, even in his first two presidential campaigns."
"The average contribution is $34. … It’s regular people. It’s small-dollar donors," Trump's senior adviser said, and later added with respect to the surge of first-time donors, "That is a remarkable level of new supporters for someone who’s been on the …. political scene for the past seven or eight years."
As for former President Trump's claim that his poll numbers have sharply increased along with campaign donations following the criminal indictment from the Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan, that is easily verified with just a quick glance at the RealClearPolitics average of GOP primary polls, which currently shows Trump with a collective 52 percent support, more than 27 points higher than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the only other prospective candidate to receive more than single-digit support.
Further, RCP's tracking graph of all of the included candidates displays a nearly vertical sharp increase in Trump's support over the past week, as it rose from 44.3 percent on March 28 to its current 52 percent on April 7.
Of course, whether that post-indictment momentum can be sustained or eventually tails off is something that only time will reveal, but at least for the moment, it sure looks like the indictment of Trump has only strengthened his candidacy and both expanded and solidified his base of support.
