Opinion | Trump's allies are making his trial into the circus he craved

For the first two weeks of former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York City, he arrived at the courtroom with little entourage. Not anymore. What began as a trickle soon became a flood as Republicans realized that Manhattan was the place to be. The official guest list of supporters there to back Trump had grown to more than a dozen people on Monday alone. Enough members of Congress made the trip up from Washington last week that their absences delayed until later in the evening a hearing on whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress.

In effect, Trump’s trial has become a miniature version of the Republican National Convention, providing a venue for GOP elites and wannabes alike to share Trump’s spotlight in hope of currying his favor. In the process, the attendees are answering a very clear cry for help from Trump, giving him the “circus” he reportedly wanted and couldn’t gin up organically.

Trump has obviously been angling to have a groundswell of support provide the adoration he draws from a crowd and to distract from the seriousness of the allegations he faces in Manhattan. But despite his calls on Truth Social, few protesters materialized. He has tried to blame the lack of crowds on malevolent Democrats who he says are blocking people from attending. The barricades that are around the courtroom are for his safety as a former president, but only a very small cadre of protesters are showing up in the assigned protest space each day. This simply wouldn’t do, not for someone who has seen diminishing returns on his threats to bring people into the streets should he face accountability.

It took a little more than a week for Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to respond to Trump’s public grumbling about the lack of public support. Scott apparently saw the opportunity that the trial presented for his re-election campaign, and his visit was followed quickly by visits from several Republicans whose names have been floated as potential Trump vice presidential nominees. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida all appeared. Most disturbingly, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to appear outside the courthouse last week gave the official seal of the party to support defendant Trump. Johnson is the current highest-ranking Republican in federal office in support of Trump over the criminal justice system.

With at least a week left before the trial’s conclusion, more than 30 Republicans have made the pilgrimage to 100 Centre St. The fullness of the GOP’s big tent was on display Monday, ranging from the slavishly sycophantic toward Trump to the merely fawning. Some of the Republicans present were elected officials or candidates, like Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois and Will Scharf, who’s running to be Missouri’s attorney general. Others were perennial members of Trump’s orbit, like lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Kash Patel, a Trump administration bureaucrat and general toady. Still others were the sort of random conservatives who even C-SPAN staffers would have trouble identifying if they were spotted at the GOP convention.

Together, clustered in front of the media’s cameras, they’ve formed an astroturf version of the crowds Trump wanted. I’d argue that the propagandistic performance on display in what has become a practice run for Trump’s coronation in July may matter more than what takes place in Milwaukee.

While the GOP’s official platform will be set at the convention, what’s transpiring in Manhattan will matter more should Trump retake the White House in November. In embracing Trump so thoroughly, these Republicans are making it crystal clear that showing their support for the first president-turned-criminal defendant and the proximity to power it brings are more important than their fealty to any ideology they may have once had.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com