Since the start of former President Donald Trump’s first criminal trial, a trickle of commentary emerged in right-wing media suggesting that the first prosecution of an ex-president in U.S. history could actually help him win reelection in November — joining a more pervasive obsession from conservative media that he is entitled to total immunity from criminal prosecution. 

Conservative commentators are warning that if Trump doesn’t get his way on immunity, America could face the type of future that he has already threatened: presidential self-pardons and politicized investigations of electoral rivals. And Trump would be able to deliver on this threat, they suggest, because the working class supports him against his “nakedly partisan” prosecution in the “kangaroo court” of his New York hush money trial.

On the morning of April 25, before going to the courthouse, Trump made a pre-planned campaign appearance with a large number of construction workers in Manhattan, who enthusiastically chanted for him. “It’s Trump’s turn again,” one worker told a Newsmax camera. The scene seems to have convinced Trump, and Newsmax host Eric Bolling, that even “blue New York is looking like a potential victory for the former president.”

“We’re gonna run very hard in New York,” Trump said, boasting that “we have a good chance of winning New York, in my opinion.” 

Bolling salivated over “the flag-waving, hard hat-wearing, red, white, and blue American workers” chanting for Trump “as he battles for his political future,” referring to the trial. 

Over a chyron that bragged “Liberal NYC looks pretty red when Trump is in town,” Bolling later asserted that the scene proved that Biden is “a weak president” who “has completely lost the support of the working class,” adding that “New York, and America, is Trump’s to win come November.” 

Bolling is not alone in this thinking. An April 16 Reuters analysis of the trial quoted Republican strategist John Feehery saying that “this case will help Trump” in the general election because “it's the weakest of the four cases, it's nakedly partisan, most Republicans see that as do some independents.” The right-wing analysis seemed to anchor the article, titled “Hush money trial could help Trump in 2024 presidential race.”

On April 23, Newsweek ran an opinion piece titled “Donald Trump’s Trial Will Only Help Him,” which pushed a slate of familiar, Trumpian arguments against Judge Juan Merchan’s “kangaroo court.” The piece argued that a conviction could convince “a large percentage of Americans … that the trial and its result were, indeed, a political persecution,” while an acquittal or mistrial “would allow Trump to proclaim not merely his innocence, but a massive victory over a biased legal system.” The article concluded: “If Trump should be reelected in November, he may owe his victory in no small part to [Manhattan District Attorney] Alvin Bragg and Juan Merchan.”

The actual situation facing Trump is not quite as optimistic. While legal experts often consider the hush money prosecution to be the most novel of the four cases facing Trump, two recent polls show that majorities of registered voters nonetheless view the charges as serious. Reuters also found that four in 10 Republicans and two-thirds of independents view the hush money charges as serious. A third poll released on May 1 discussing all of his criminal cases found that 47% of Americans believe that Trump broke the law. 

It seems that Trump’s New York hush money trial and his other prosecutions pose a serious threat not only to his continued freedom, but to his political career, and his right-wing media allies apparently know this and are doing what they can to fight against it.

Some of those attempts are targeted, like former Trump strategist and War Room host Steve Bannon encouraging Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) to announce investigations into Bragg and prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, which Jordan followed through on earlier this week. In a similar vein, MAGA media outlets have attacked jurors and encouraged Trump supporters to try to get on the jury and sabotage the process from the inside. 

Some attempts are more transparently limp, like the right-wing media trend of praising Trump for repeatedly falling asleep in court. And other figures are clinging to Trump’s own claims of immunity — which were rejected by a D.C. appeals court judge in February and are now under review by the Supreme Court. (In an interview with Time magazine this week, Trump said he would prosecute Biden if the Supreme Court does not grant him immunity and threatened political violence if he loses the 2024 election.)

“Without immunity in this country, Sean, all presidents would be hamstrung with criminal issues their entire presidency” amid “an endless cycle of former presidents being prosecuted,” former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox host Sean Hannity’s April 29 radio show. 

“You can go all the way back to Abe Lincoln,” Bondi asserted. “Look what would have happened with Abraham Lincoln. I mean, every single president throughout history.” 

It is unclear what Bondi meant by invoking Lincoln, who was assassinated at the start of his second term by a Confederate sympathizer.

On Fox News, Daily Caller editorial director Vince Coglianese emphasized the possibility that “if there is no immunity whatsoever, we may get a cycle where presidents pardon themselves on a pro forma basis every time they’re about to leave office, just to make sure the other guy doesn't prosecute them,” which Trump reportedly almost did in 2021. 

“That’s not the world we want to live in,” Coglianese added.