It’s not that he actually believes this, it’s that the party’s base has determined that you can’t oppose Trump, so they need to find a reason why people should vote for them instead of Trump while not taking the position that Trump should be in jail.
It’s the usual mental gymnastics. Desantis is doing the exact same thing.
The only winning move is to just offer a better solution and ignore him.
You'd think a better solution would be easy to find, but they spent so long indoctrinating their own followers to be loyal to names rather than concepts that they now fear these followers may attach to the Trump name.
It's sad how quickly they forget the buttery males. Ol' "lock her up" Hillary "basket of deplorables" Clinton was so deserving of jail time because of those emails, but insurrection and election fraud? Nah. Those are locker room felonies.
The GOP is a joke and the rubes that choose to plug their ears and ignore the obvious are clowns 🤡🇺🇸
It's probably going to be a new Trump party if he's not nominated so for Republicans they need him. It's the same with right wing media. Trump has such broad support that there's no way anyone on the right can effectively oppose him at this point.