Maybe that’s a more effective position than at first it sounds. One way to interpret it is that the trials have imposed a deadline and he is in a race to beat it: to consolidate the support of the Party before his most serious cases get under way, so that he can campaign against the charges as partisan fictions. This may explain his curiously subdued performance after his win in Iowa, which derailed the campaign of Ron DeSantis, his only real challenger on the right. Speaking at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, Trump praised both DeSantis and Nikki Haley, and repeatedly urged the Party to “come together.” In recent campaign appearances, Trump has tended to stand alone on the stage and deliver a harangue, but in Des Moines he was flanked by his sons Eric and Don, Jr., and devoted part of his meandering victory speech to the sports preferences and tall height of his youngest son, Barron. Donald Trump, political conciliator and family man? It would be a real turn. But organizing his campaign around the idea that the trials are a Democratic setup means that Trump has to get the whole Party behind him, even those members who have long found him immoral, vindictive, or extreme.