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The arraignment of Donald Trump in a Manhattan courtroom has created no shortage of opinions on what happens next for the former President and the country over the next two years. Political commentator Chris Matthews joined 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to offer his view on this unprecedented chapter in American history.
“Don’t think about this story without thinking about the drama of what this week is,” Matthews reminded Riedel and newsman Joe Bartlett, filling in for Berman. “It’s Holy Week, it’s Passover, it’s got a lot of figures in our brain, how we’re gonna react to this thing, and the sense of unfairness is going to be powerful.”
Matthews addressed Bartlett’s concerns about whether Trump could still manage to win the Republican nomination to run for President in 2024 by saying, “I really think that Trump is on his own when it comes to ‘I won the election.’ But he’s gonna have the Republican party on his side today and for the future. This thing today, unless there’s something in there about a felony that makes sense- if it looks like a felony, if it looks like he actually broke the law in the way the average person would say yeah, he broke the law- he’s gonna win.”
Ultimately, Matthews thinks that the magic that catapulted Trump into the White House in 2016 isn’t there, at least not yet. “He had everything going for him. He was good television, audiences loved him, he was funny. Is he still that good? Does he still have it to knock off anybody who gets in the ring with him? I don’t know. I think if he is, he’s been holding it back.”
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