Orange Is the New Orange

What Trump's indictment does to the 2024 race.

We did an emergency livestream last night. You can watch the video or listen to the audio archive here.

Here’s a taste of our first reactions. ALL CAPS AMANDA is the best Amanda.

As for the JVL AMA, I’m not sure I liked the chat feature—and I can’t even tell how many questions there were. It may not be well suited to the size of our community. Maybe we’ll move it back to the comments next time. I’m sorry if I didn’t get to your questions—I hit as many as I could before I needed to crash. You can read it here if you are curious.

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(Composite / Photos: GettyImages)

1. Dynamics

The most immediate question is what Trump’s indictment does to the dynamics of the 2024 primary campaign. Generally speaking, there are three possibilities:

1. No effect: The campaign continues to develop no differently than it would have had Trump not been indicted.

2. Instability: The race destabilizes and becomes more volatile and less predictable.

3. Freeze frame: The race becomes frozen where it is.

I’m going to give you the argument for each scenario. And then I’ll tell you which I think is right.