Trump's indictment breakdown: Charges, the impact on the GOP, and 2024 election

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins the Live show to discuss Donald Trump’s indictment and how it will impact the United States.

Video Transcript

RACHELLE AKUFFO: Former President Trump's indictment could spell chaos in Congress and sets up a wild ride for the 2024 presidential contest. Joining us now to break down the latest is Yahoo Finance's own Rick Newman. Hey, Rick.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey, guys. We have quite a political earthquake here.

One thing I would like to point out is there's an assumption that these charges, which we don't know yet, mainly relate to, you know, the hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels. And that probably is part of it. It could be a big part of it. But there are also reports that there could be up to 30 separate charges in this indictment and that some of those involve business-fraud allegations, tax-fraud allegations, things like that. So it is possible that this indictment by the Manhattan district attorney of Donald Trump is much broader than we have been led to believe by the leaks so far.

We have not seen the indictment yet. It's not public. We may not know what is in there until next week when Trump is reportedly going to show up at the Manhattan DA's office for an arraignment. But this could be broader than we have been led to believe, so I think that's something everybody should keep in mind here.

BRAD SMITH: And, Rick, what have we heard from Florida on this? Of course, Mar-a-Lago is where Trump has been spending all of his time. So there's really going to need to be some cooperation there, if any.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, it sounds as if Trump is going to voluntarily show up. Trump, of course, says he's innocent of all charges. And I think what we can expect is that Trump is going to do everything he can to play this to his advantage and make it look like he's the victim of a, quote, "witch hunt," which has been his go-to phrase now for what seems like decades.

But, you know, so there's now this political guessing about, does this actually enhance Trump's popularity within the Republican Party? Does it give him an edge in the Republican primary election for 2024? I don't know about that.

I do think that it would damage him in a general election. Polls show that a majority of voters of all parties think Trump should actually be disqualified from running for president if he is charged with a crime, which apparently he now has been. So I think what this does is throws the Republican party into more disarray than it has been in, if that's possible.

BRAD SMITH: All right, Yahoo Finance's own Rick Newman teeing up the conversation for us.