A Day of Negative Headlines for Trump Points to a Cure for Voter ‘Amnesia’

In roughly 24 hours on Tuesday, former President Donald J. Trump reposted a video with an echo of Nazi Germany, hinted at restricting contraception and made news in two of the criminal cases against him.

Share full article

Former President Donald J. Trump in a Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday.

President Biden has been battling a new phenomenon in American politics: what Democrats and pollsters have taken to calling “Trump amnesia,” a softening of feeling about his successor’s tumultuous term as president.

But over roughly 24 hours on Tuesday, Donald J. Trump provided what looked like at least a temporary cure. He reposted a video containing the words “unified Reich,” reviving accusations that he flirts with Nazism. He hinted at the idea of restricting contraception, and rehired as a campaign aide a political operative with a record of accusations of sexual harassment.

A court ruling unsealed later in the day in one of the federal criminal cases against Mr. Trump showed that a judge had questioned how documents with classification markings could have been overlooked repeatedly before they turned up in Mr. Trump’s own bedroom.

And by midmorning, Mr. Trump’s defense rested in a criminal case that threatens to forever affix a label to him that no presidential candidate has yet survived: convicted felon.

Mr. Trump has built a political career on surviving the unsurvivable: No matter how much chaos he creates or how many political norms he shatters, his Republican base stands by him. But now, he is leaving the all-forgiving conservative cocoon to enter the crucible of a general election. Much of his electoral success may depend on whether voters who are not yet irrevocably in his corner recall, are repelled by and reject the turbulence, divisiveness and inflammatory rhetoric that cost him re-election four years ago.

So far, that has not happened. Even as Mr. Trump spends weeks sitting in court as a criminal defendant, he leads in many polls of swing states. Surveys show that views of his administration have improved with distance, with voters remembering those years as a time of economic prosperity and strong national security. While Americans still remember Mr. Trump as a divisive and polarizing figure, a larger share of voters now see his term as better for the country than President Biden’s.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.