‘I think he is in a very difficult spot;’ Area politics professor shares impacts of Trump indictment

DAYTON — For the third time, former president Donald Trump was criminally indicted.

This time on federal charges around attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The indictment makes a case that the former president knew he lost the 2020 election, knowingly lied, and took efforts to try and change the election results.

Four counts are listed in the indictment against Trump.

It lists conspiracy to defraud the united states, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Ohio is a state Trump won in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.

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News Center 7′s Brandon Lewis spoke to area voters about how this will impact how they cast their ballots next year.

Some voters said they thought the Department of Justice was unfairly targeting Trump, while others said he had this coming.

And then there some who like Rick Webster, said he was they were fed up with all of Washington.

“I think they should lock them all up. And I think we all need all new people put in, somebody a little younger, you know, somebody that can deal with the generation,” Webster said.

Mark Caleb Smith is Cedarville University’s director of the Center for Political Studies.

He thinks out of the three criminal cases Trump faces, this newest indictment is the most serious.

“It directly deals with the issues of January 6,” Smith said. “It’s going to be politically complicated for the president, and it’s going to be legal, I think he is in a very difficult spot.”

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As Trump tries to focus on winning next year’s presidential election. Smith said the indictment may not have much of an effect short-term, but he thinks that may not be the case if Trump wins the Republican nomination.

“Those voters who are very put off by Mr. Trump in 2020, you know, we’re talking about suburban voters, white voters with a college education, female voters who are in those circumstances in particular, it’s hard to see how these things help him when it comes to a general election,” Smith said.

But what Smith worries about, goes beyond next year’s election.

“The big picture is, do we have confidence in the Department of Justice to bring charges against Donald Trump? And there’s a huge chunk of the country that does not have that confidence at all. And there’s another huge chunk that fully agrees with what the DOJ is doing. And I can’t see how those two points of view get reconciled without even more conflict, so we’ll see,” he said.

Tuesday the New York Times and Sienna College released a poll.

It said in a hypothetical rematch for the White House 43 percent of the people polled would vote for Biden and 43 percent would vote for Trump.

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