Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Legal Forum Jack Smith, Special Counsel

Jack will want to know why Pence wouldn't get into the car on J6 when the Secret Service directed him to. Of course that answer will lead other questions along the same line.

Keep in mind, Pence is running for POTUS in 2024. How he conducts himself in front of this Special Council will dictate how voters view him.

as long as he doesn't mention Trump in any context he will maintain his 2% approval rating among "Republicans", and 0% among the MAGA-heads.

The latest favorable/unfavorable among Republicans and Republicans only are:

Pence 56/35 favorable/unfavorable
DeSantis 70/14 favorable/unfavorable
Trump 74/21 favorable/unfavorable

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/gg0t2njevs/econTabReport.pdf

The latest on the Republican presidential nomination, Trump 48.3%, DeSantis 29.7, Pence 2.0

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/e...blican_presidential_nomination-7548.html

But you also have this:

DeSantis beats Trump in 2024 GOP primary — if Nikki Haley stays out: poll

https://nypost.com/2023/02/09/poll-trump-beats-desantis-in-2024-gop-primary/

Now you know why Trump wants Haley in the race for the GOP presidential nomination. But I’ve always said while the two major parties decide their own candidates, who wins and loses in the primaries. It’s independents that decide who wins and loses from the candidates the two major parties chose in the general election. The more important numbers than the above are how independents view these three, Independents and independents only:

Pence 27/48 favorable/unfavorable
DeSantis 35/34 favorable/unfavorable
Trump 40/49 favorable/unfavorable

Jack Smith's investigation DC grand jury has spoken to former Members of Trump's 2020 Team regarding research commissioned by the Trump campaign in a failed attempt to find election fraud.

The Berkeley Research Group was commissioned to look into voting data from six states, according to the Post, and a source told the publication that the campaign team wanted about a dozen claims tested. People familiar with the matter told the publication that the findings did not match what the team had hoped for, and the findings were never released.

This means, that on J6, when Trump was on the dias, telling his MAGAt supporters to march up to the Capitol and "fight like Hell," he knowingly and willingly lied to them to rile them up because the research company he hired told him he didn't win the 2020 election.

Sounds like intent to defraud.

The problem with any post election auditing or actual counting meant for dissemination to MAGA-heads is the only result they will accept is Trump won.

None of the governmental agencies authorized to do recounts or audits have considered those items delusional people 'know" helped steal the election such as special Biden watermarked paper, Chinese thermostats with internet connections to Beijing, Italian lasers changing votes on machines, bamboo paper directly from China, Democrat Party bulk dumping of ballots for Biden, Democrat Party mules, Dominion machines software flipping votes to Biden, Smartmatic software flipping votes to Biden, Democrat Party onsite machine hacking to flip votes, anti-Trump conspiracy to not reject signatures, dead people voting, illegals voting, people voting more than once, Covid conspired with Democrat Party to change laws which disenfranchised Trump voters, state legislatures conspired to disenfranchise Trump voters, local election boards conspired to disenfranchise Trump voters, state courts conspired with anti-Trump forces to disenfranchise Trump voters, and I am not even close to being finished with all the ways almost everyone in this country was involved in a vast conspiracy to fraudulently rig the election in Biden's favor.

So even if Trump had knowledge of this report (one among many he was apprised, which indicated he lost the election, which he had acknowledged in private) none of them had done the type of research which would address all the ways MAGA-heads believe the election was stolen, And even if after all of these had been researched they would still not believe the election was not stolen. I advocated the J6 Committee address each of these in the only and best hope of exposing the ludicrous nature of their beliefs in the hope that some would recognize the delusion they held. Barring that, they would continue to strongly believe the election was stolen.

These polling results will be more meaningful in 12 months. The only thing certain is Pence is not now nor will he be in the future a viable Republican candidate. De Santis is the only current possible candidate who has some of the qualities the MAGA Base likes. He is brash, uses the government against political opponents, ant-woke, all of which demonstrates his bigotry and fascism. But what they are looking for is someone who actually says white supremacists stand back and stand by, and some on the other side are fine people i.e. he has to explicitly tell them he is a true believer. Until someone speaks exactly like Trump and is better than Trump, Trump will remain front runner.

The MAGA Base is religious in their support for Trump. Because he is a narcissist he has to be the winner, so he will therefore direct his supporters to continue their support for him .... whatever that will mean at primary time. Despite the fact he does not have financial support form large donors, remember he ran a very lean campaign in 2016, instead utilizing the free use of media in several format and platforms. I suspect he will rely on the same paradigm and media will have no choice but to follow him. For these and other reasons, I continue to see him as front runner. I make no predictions whether he will or can win a general but remember, 76M people voted for him and also remember the swing states have passed election laws which could disenfranchise enough anti-Trump voters to change the results. A small number of thousands of votes could change the results.

True. I can’t tell you what will happen in Nov 2024 or in the primaries when they begin a year from now. I can tell you the likely outcome if these things were to happen today. Now one can look at trends from the polls for 6 months to a year and apply that trend to the future. Trends however can change.

I’ll say this, going by today’s numbers that Trump would win the Republican Primaries due to his very loyal MAGA faction while all other factions within the GOP are divided. Can the approximately 60% of Republicans who aren’t MAGA Trumpers unite to defeat MAGA Trumpers 40%. I don’t think so. Remember Trump won the Republican Party nomination winning around 35% of the primary vote in a very large field back in 2016. On the Democratic side, if Biden decides to run again, I don’t see where any democrat would challenge him and it would be folly to do so. Sitting presidents who were challenged, all have lost in the general. Truman decided not to run for reelection when Kefauver challenged him in 1952. LBJ joined Truman in deciding not to run again in 1968 when challenged by McCarthy. Reagan challenged Ford in 1976, Ford lost to Carter. Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter in 1980, Carter lost to Reagan. Buchanan challenged G.H.W. Bush in 1992, Bush lost to Clinton.

I think the best scenario for the Democrats would be for Biden to announce he isn’t running again late this year. Let a fresh, young face come to the fore.

I am looking forward to the indictments.

A lot of decent Americans are.