Story
Trump’s indictment bounce looks mixed in early polling
Early post-indictment polling pointed to a split picture: Trump’s core supporters stayed with him, but there was no clear sign of a broad political rebound.
Edition · April 8, 2023
The Daily Fuckup: April 7, 2023 Edition
Trump’s post-indictment spin kept running into reality: new polling, fresh legal scrutiny, and a campaign whose best argument was still that being charged is good for business.
On April 7, 2023, the Trump world stayed trapped in the same hole it had spent the week digging after the Manhattan indictment: denial, grievance, and increasingly thin attempts to call a criminal case a political win. The day’s most notable developments were not flashy new charges, but the fallout around the first-ever criminal prosecution of a former president — including polling showing the indictment was not helping Trump’s public standing the way his allies claimed, plus continued scrutiny of the case and the messages coming from his orbit. This backfill edition focuses on the strongest Trump-world screwups that landed on that exact date, with the evidence kept tight to the day.
Closing take
April 7 was less about a dramatic new Trump collapse than the slow-motion embarrassment of watching his team pretend a felony indictment was a branding opportunity. The harder they shouted “victim,” the more the day’s reporting made clear that the legal, political, and public-relations costs were already real.
Ranked by how bad the fuckup was
5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.
Story
The Manhattan case keeps getting worse for Trump’s brand
April 7 kept the focus on Trump’s hush-money prosecution, with the week’s legal and political fallout underscoring how badly the indictment had damaged the former president’s image. The story was not a single new blow so much as a day of accumulating evidence that the case had become a durable liability.