Exclusive — Mark Meckler: Polling Shows Indictment Would Benefit Trump

Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States, told Breitbart News Saturday that recent polling shows the potential indictment of former President Donald Trump would benefit him.

According to a poll conducted by Convention of States Action in conjunction with the Trafalgar Group and obtained by Breitbart News exclusively on Friday, 74 percent of Americans say an indictment of Trump either helps him or will have no effect on his presidential campaign.

That number is broken down by 37.5 percent who said it will not affect Trump and 36.8 percent who said it will help him. Just 25.7 percent of voters polled believe it will hurt Trump’s presidential campaign.

“So what it’s showing is that the American people really, generally speaking, aren’t interested in this [indictment], at worst for Democrats it’s gonna give him a boost. I think we’re already seeing that it gives him the boost,” Meckler said in his assessment.

Meckler said unaffiliated voters are also not impressed with the potential indictment.

“I think most interesting is where people with unaffiliated folks fall. And the reason I think that’s important is those are the swing voters, and so you have a full third of that 33 percent say it helps the campaign. Thirty-nine percent say it doesn’t matter either way,” he said. “So what they’re doing is they’re swinging independence towards Trump with this potential indictment.”

Meckler said generally that the indictment would benefit Trump among GOP voters because of the real or perceived injustices “piled” up against the former president over the years:

They just see this continuing injustice piled upon attack piled on attack against Trump. It makes Trump just a more sympathetic figure to the Republican base. As Republicans, we know that we’re under assault. Conservatives know they’re under assault. So when President Trump gets attacked like this, we feel it personally. Trump said at one point, ‘they’re not attacking me because they hate me, they attack because they hate you,’ and that’s what we see when we see this kind of assault, and so I do think it really strongly rallies the base around Donald Trump.

However, Meckler warned that Trump’s possibly unwarranted attacks on potential opponent Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) might not be helping Trump politically among Republican voters.

“I travel all over the country. I can tell you there are a lot of people who have been a little bit frustrated with Trump and just how he’s behaved towards DeSantis, but this [indictment] has rallied them around Trump, even the people that are frustrated with Trump,” he said.

Meckler also suggested that DeSantis might also have made a mistake by returning attacks against Trump. He said the polls support his analysis.

“I thought it showed weakness for him to take a swipe at Donald Trump here,” Meckler estimated. “What’s been serving DeSantis has kinda been just ignoring the attacks from Trump, and I think you could have showed real leadership by just aggressively attacking the prosecution, not going after Donald Trump at all. I understand on a personal level why it’s probably frustrating to him, but I don’t think it was a good political move, and the polls show that’s definitely not a good political move.”