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Is the Republican Primary Already Over?

With the Manhattan district attorney threatening to put Trump on trial, and DeSantis declining to stand in his way, G.O.P. operatives are coalescing around the notion that it’s now the ex-president’s race to lose.

Ignoring Donald Trump has essentially been Ron DeSantis’s strategy over the past two years while angling for a ’24 presidential run—but a well-placed G.O.P. comms official fully disagreed the approach, calling it “consultant stuff that sends all the wrong signals.”
At the moment, DeSantis is exhibiting a not-my-problem approach to the Trump-Bragg ordeal. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Tina Nguyen
March 22, 2023

Last August, as F.B.I. agents hauled boxes of classified documents out of Mar-a-Lago, I surveyed a few Republican and MAGA operatives about how this latest legal woe might impact Donald Trump’s political future. For a brief moment, the former president’s opponents entertained the notion that surely this would be the scandal that broke his hold over the Republican Party. Wasn’t Trump actively endangering national security by leaving sensitive nuclear secrets in his desk?