Indictments fueled extremists’ support for Trump, survey finds

The criminal charges against Donald Trump have fueled increased radical support for the former president while his efforts to paint the government and Democrats as a threat to democracy have convinced more people to distrust democratic institutions.

New survey results from the University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPOST) shows increased violent support for Trump aligns with the indictments, as did the erosion of support for democratic norms. Court cases using the 14th amendment to try to keep Trump off the ballot could further erode confidence in the political system, regardless of how the supreme court rules on the issue, the survey found.

Support for democratic norms has gone from “bad to worse”, said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who directs CPOST. The two ideas are connected: The more a person believes the system is corrupt or rigged, the more likely they are to support using violence instead of the political system.

“Once you think you live in a corrupt political system, then you give up on politics as a solution and you go for violence,” Pape said.

While 50% of survey respondents said Trump was a threat to democracy, now 36% said the same of Democratic president Joe Biden. That means Trump’s attempt to twist messaging is working: the former president has repeatedly attacked Biden in recent months as Biden warns of the threat Trump poses to democracy after Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump has called Biden a “threat to democracy” and a “destroyer” of democracy.

Effectively, Trump has turned a losing issue for himself, the future of democracy, into much less of a liability, particularly among Republicans.

“His new argument … is that the