Associated Press
Kathleen Evenhouse took a break from her work in the corner of a small-town Iowa coffee shop to slam the federal criminal indictment of Donald Trump as patently political, the work of a U.S. Justice Department she says is awash in hypocrisy.
“I think we’re playing a game as a country,” the 72-year-old author from Pella said in an interview, expressing a sentiment widely shared among conservatives since the former president was charged. “I think that damages any sense of justice or any sense of — should I even bother to vote? Why should I listen to the news? Or why should I care?”
Evenhouse does plan to vote in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation Republican presidential caucuses next year. Despite her anger about Trump’s plight, he will not win her support.
Many voters in early states who will play an outsize role in deciding his political fate agree that he is being treated unfairly. While there is widespread distrust of the Justice Department and its pursuit of him on charges that he illegally stored classified documents and tried to hide them from federal officials, some voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina say Trump has become too damaged to be nominated by his party a third time.
“If you dig a hole and then you have to climb out, it’s going to be harder to do,” Evenhouse said. “And that’s where I think he is.”
Maintaining that Trump was unfairly targeted while other people who were found to have classified documents in their possession were treated differently requires the dismissal of key differences. Most notably, President Joe Biden, former Vice President Mike Pence and others cooperated with federal officials once documents were discovered in their possession. Trump, according to the 37-count indictment filed in federal court in Miami, ignored a federal subpoena and tried to deceive the Justice Department about what he had.
Resentment over his treatment has been nurtured not just by Trump but by some conservative commentators, Republicans in Congress and White House rivals. Republicans who acknowledge the different circumstances have kept a lower profile.
While the double-standard theory may have taken hold among GOP voters in the early states, it’s not clear that such outrage will translate into ballots cast for Trump when voting for president begins next year. It’s not so much that voters have lost affection for Trump, but that the turmoil has become too heavy a burden for some of them to feel he can win.
“Right now I am a Trump supporter,” said 76-year-old Karen Szelest of Indian Land, South Carolina. “However, I think they’re doing everything they can to have him not run for president of the United States. And I think perhaps, for the betterment of the country, I may vote for somebody else because they keep going after Trump, going after Trump, going after Trump.”
Last week marked a jarring point in the presidential campaign when the Justice Department moved forward with the indictment, a first for a former president, let alone one accused of mishandling top-secret information.
The indictment unsealed last week charged Trump with 37 felony counts — many under the Espionage Act — that accuse him of illegally storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and trying to hide them from investigators who demanded them back.
After entering his not guilty plea on Tuesday, Trump immediately returned to portraying himself as a victim of a politically driven department aimed at keeping him from returning to the presidency he wrongly claims was stolen from him in 2020.
Some of the roughly 20 early-state voters interviewed this past week spent most of the time railing against what they see as that department’s political agenda.
“It makes me sick that there seems to be completely different criteria for a conservative, and especially Donald Trump,” said Sue VanEe, a 68-year old retired farmer who was waiting for a friend at the same coffee shop where Evenhouse was writing. “Completely different. Like opposite.”
Biden has said he communicated with neither the Justice Department nor the special prosecutor on any aspect of the investigation before the indictment was unsealed.
Skepticism was pervasive among Republicans interviewed by The Associated Press after Trump appeared in federal court and, through his lawyers, entered not guilty pleas to all charges.
That mirrors a persistent split across party lines in how the case is viewed. An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted last weekend found that Americans were more likely to say Trump should be charged in the documents case than those who say he should not, 48% to 35%. At the same time, 47% of adults believe the charges are politically motivated, compared with 37% who say they are not.
Most Republicans, however, said he should not be charged, and 80% of them believe the charges are politically motivated, according to the ABC poll.
As for the election, polls conducted over the last few months have consistently found Trump as the early front-runner on the Republican side.
Trump’s challenge will be maintaining that advantage as the legal cases against him proceed. His hope that they will work in his favor is bolstered by Republican-leaning voters such as Kelly White of Indian Land.
“It kind of makes me want to support him more,” she said.
Among the most common counterarguments, there are those people who play down the allegations Trump faces while also pointing to what they see as a double standard — one that has excused, for instance, the email server that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, kept in the basement of her private residence in New York.
Charges that she mishandled classified documents weren’t pursued by the Justice Department, in part because relevant Espionage Act cases brought over the past century involved alleged efforts to obstruct justice and willful mishandling of classified information. Those factors were not at play in her case, investigators concluded.
At a farmer’s market in Bedford, New Hampshire, Tom Zapora was chatting with friends and snacking on a “tornado potato,” a spiraled, fried potato on a skewer, shortly after Trump’s appearance in court.
“There’s a lot of things going on there, and in my humble opinion, the current president, past presidents, have done as much if not more wrong than he has and they’ve kind of slid under the radar,” said Zapora, a Republican who owns a moving company.
In Pella, a Dutch-themed community of about 10,000 people in Iowa’s Republican-heavy Marion County where Trump received two-thirds of the vote in 2020, the investigation was hardly the most pressing issue on the minds of voters at a campaign event Wednesday for one of Trump’s challengers, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. During a question-and-answer session, it took 40 minutes for the subject of the indictment to come up.
When it did, the questioner ignored the charges against Trump, asking instead about the fairness of the Justice Department.
Standing in the audience of about 200, 58-year-old engineer Gina Singer, who has been a devoted Trump supporter, said the indictment had become a distraction from the serious business of choosing a presidential nominee who can beat Biden next year.
Though she’s bothered by what she sees as a double standard, she is uncertain about whether Trump will be saddled with so much suspicion that she thinks a next-generation candidate may be what’s best for the party.
“I love everything he stands for and I want his policies to be enacted,” Singer said. “But they’ll just keep on going after him. So, I’m looking for someone else. Both things can be true.”
16 comments
The end of the republican party
June 17, 2023 at 4:05 pm
if the republican party wants to survive the Trump era, they need to start being more honest, and they need to put forward a candidate that doesn’t have trumps ideology and isn’t focused on culture wars. Unfortunately, the GOP has become the party of culture wars attacking everybody in America except for the white heterosexual male or wealthy individuals.
The current presidential candidates are too entrenched in Trump ideology. They will need to bring someone else forward. It’s actually cares about Americans and the law.
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Eduarde Slaveen Worldwide 👍
June 17, 2023 at 4:10 pm
His stupid voters should be saying, “I like his policies but he keeps doing illegal stuff so I’ll move on” instead of “I like his policies but they keep going after him so I’ll move on.” Blaming everyone but him for his lies and crimes. What kind of people are we dealing with here? He got a girl killed at the Capitol with his lies for Christ sakes. These people are intellectually disabled and morally bankrupt.
Jay Smif
June 17, 2023 at 4:23 pm
He’s a criminal that’s been caught dead to rights, with more felony indictments coming down the barrel at him at the state and federal levels. Embrace the suck, cultists.
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WhatNow
June 17, 2023 at 4:47 pm
“ ‘I think we’re playing a game as a country,’ the 72-year-old author from Pella said in an interview, expressing a sentiment widely shared among conservatives since the former president was charged. ‘I think that damages any sense of justice or any sense of — should I even bother to vote? Why should I listen to the news? Or why should I care?’ ” – Oh boy GOD BLESS KATHLEEN EVENHOUSE! If only more conservatives and Republicans felt and thought as she does… just give up and stop voting when things in life no longer seem to go as you wish them to! Sounds like a GREAT plan for all the right wing extremists among us to follow! I’m all for it!
WhatNow
June 17, 2023 at 4:56 pm
“After entering his not guilty plea on Tuesday, Trump immediately returned to portraying himself as a victim” – Big Orange Snowflake that he’s become…
PeterH
June 17, 2023 at 7:29 pm
Republicans could have ‘moved on’ when Democrats impeached their foolish leader years ago!
Earl Pitts American
June 17, 2023 at 7:39 pm
Good evening America,
What we have is a lot of Trump 2016 voters mad as HeII, speaking from their emotions, and saying they want Trump back in office nothing more nothing less.
Conservatives, unlike child like emotional dook 4 brains leftists, dont cast their final vote with their emotions, conservatives vote logically on election day.
Would it be emotional or logical to vote Trump on election day? It would be emotional, and Conservatives will vote emotionally [Trump] on primary day, but logically [Desantis] on election day.
So my peeps there you have it: on election day 2024 the dook 4 brains leftists will be “BlindSided and LandSlided” by the Desantis/Pitts team. There will be much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rendering of garments by the dook 4 brains leftists Nation Wide – reminicent of the Hillary Clinton 2016 epic fail.
So as we look back to 2016, we recall that at about 9:02 PM, Eastern Standard Time, the entire dook 4 brains leftist population Nation Wide lost control of their bowels and began to wail and scream at the sky. Somehow the one smart person on Hillary’s team had the wherewithall to place a call to that barge loaded with Hillary’s celebratory fireworks in New York City Harbor and tell them not to fire off their “Rockets Red Glare”.
The Desantis/Pitts Team is working on the best locations to stage our barges loaded with fireworks for our own “BlindSlide LandSlide” light ’em up celebration at 9:02 PM Eastern Standard Time on 2024’s election eve.
A few locations we have already committed to: Miami, Ft. Myers/Naples area, The Villages, Pensacola, Dallas, Panama City FL, maybe the Tampa/St. Pete area to whizz off all the dook 4 brains leftys that live there, the Sunshine State Majic Kingdom in Orlando (see what I, Earl Pitts American just did there?), and many more locations Nation Wide.
This look ahead “true view” of election eve 2024 has been brought to you as a public service courtsey of the Desantis/Pitts 2024 Field Operations and Logistics Team under the capable oversight and guidance of Earl Pitts American.
Thank you America,
Earl Pitts “2024 Reciepant Of The Presidental Medal Of Honor (just like Rush)” American
Joe The Plumber
June 17, 2023 at 8:45 pm
Earl,
I’ve called all the posters above to see how they are doing after reading your post.
They all stated they dooked themselves massivally after reading your post.
They stated the will respond to your post tomorow as they had massivally dooked their drawers and are very busy deciding either to wash out their dook drawers out in the toilet or just throw their dook drawers away and buy some more.
Thsnks Joe
Earl Pitts American
June 17, 2023 at 9:17 pm
Thank you Joe,
And I, Earl Pitts American, actually have commissioned studies on the massive dook drop by leftists which occured back in 2016 around 9:02PM EST on election eve. What we found was that most dook 4 brains leftists actually were actually able to make it to a toilet. However the massive Nation Wide leftist dook drop overwhelmed our Nations sewage processing plants.
Thilat caused a 4 inch rise in sea levels world wide and as a result killed 4 polar bears.
I, Earl Pitts American, will require all dook 4 brains leftys to fast for 2 days prior to the 2024 election year eve, which should reduce and mitigate the massive “All At Once” leftist dook drop load to manageable levels after 9:02 election eve anouncement of the Desantis/Pitts win for the gold. Thanks for bringing that up Joe.
Earl Pitts American
Elliott Offen
June 18, 2023 at 6:58 am
👆 Used to have screen name “Tom” before he bombed with “Tropical 2 hurricane” during Ian. Stupid yet on here calling everyone else stupid. Brain is the size of a peanut.
Earl Pitts American
June 18, 2023 at 7:59 am
Thanks Smelliott,
Together we are the best tag team at getting Americans to read my, Earl Pitts American’s, sweet knowledge drops of superior wisdom. We have fans in every nation with Internet access waiting to soak up my, Earl Pitts American’s, common sense and share the knowledge with friends and family. We recently picked up loyal fans at the research station in Antartica as well as the International Space Station.
Thank you Smelliott for being a vital part of The Earl Pitts American Team. I wish I could find more loyal employees like you Smelliott.
EPA
Elliott Offen
June 18, 2023 at 12:16 pm
Go get yourself some medicine and some help for your mental disorder and intellectual devastation.
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CJ-FL
June 24, 2023 at 3:10 pm
I guess you can pretend that the DOJ is politicized and they are just “going after trump unfairly”. But only if you know nothing or choose to ignore facts of the law. Or perhaps, while claiming to be for law and order, you disrespect the court’s decisions that trump lost the 2020 election. If he lost, he then tried to steal it back.
When these charges come, your response will be the same. Empty.
Comments are closed.