Democrats sure do want to face Donald Trump in 2024. That is increasingly clear with each new indictment of the former president, the third one dropping yesterday.

Frankly, it is a bizarre twist of fate that Democrats want exactly the same thing as the Republicans’ MAGA base — a Trump presidential nomination. (See, Joe Biden can bring unity!)

Every time Trump is indicted, outrage on his behalf grows along with his poll numbers because an increasing number of Republicans rightly view this legal persecution for what it is — scandalously political. Of course, these folks want Trump to win and, to put it mildly, knock some heads once back in office.

Democrats, by contrast, think they can easily beat Trump (and down-ballot Republicans) in a fourth straight election because of two aces up their sleeves: the incredible motivator of Trump Derangement Syndrome and the means to capitalize on it through bulk-mail balloting. (Note: It doesn’t matter whether you think they beat Trump; it matters whether they think they beat Trump.)

Here’s a little proof of the Democrat strategy: “On the day that Devon Archer, a business associate and longtime friend of Hunter Biden, testified before the House Oversight committee, CNN and MSNBC instead flooded the airwaves with their favorite topic: Donald Trump,” reports the Media Research Center. “Between 6:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. eastern, CNN and MSNBC made a combined 759 mentions of Donald Trump, while at the same time mentioning Devon Archer just 48 times.”

Free and hysterical wall-to-wall coverage of Trump helped him win the nomination in 2016. Clearly, the media think it’ll work again.

Which brings us to Jack Smith’s 45-page indictment over Trump’s behavior related to the 2020 election and January 6, which, notably, came one day after Archer’s damning testimony about the Biden Crime Family. We know this will shock you to your core, but Smith’s new indictment is no better than Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s hilariously pathetic charges over the Stormy Daniels affair. It’s nowhere near as serious as Smith’s earlier two-tiered-justice indictment over the classified documents fiasco. (Still waiting on that indictment of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Mike Pence, and who knows how many other classified document mishandlers.)

For starters, Trump said … a lot of stuff after the 2020 election. Yet even congressional Democrats hell-bent on impeaching him for a second time after the January 6 riot couldn’t tie anything he said to the violence that day. Neither, apparently, could Jack Smith produce any evidence. It’s certainly telling that he didn’t use the phony “insurrection” label.

Instead, the indictment even offered a back-handed defense of Trump, saying he “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.” However, Smith went on to stretch reality to reach four charges:

• Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

• Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding

• Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding

• Conspiracy Against [Voting] Rights

The indictment also listed but did not name six “co-conspirators,” likely including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and John Eastman.

Essentially, Smith says if a president lies and then acts on that lie, he is conspiring against and defrauding the United States. The editors of The Wall Street Journal nail it, writing, “You don’t have to be a defender of Donald Trump to worry about where this will lead.”

This isn’t impeachment, which is a political solution to a sometimes political problem. This is an illegitimate attempt to criminalize Trump’s post-election statements when no law had done so, all so Democrats can have a mulligan on their failed second impeachment.

Among other problems with prosecuting this mess, Smith would have to prove Trump knowingly lied. Good luck with that.

Perhaps most revealing of all, during Smith’s press conference announcing the charges, he didn’t really bother with trying to explain the charges or persuade anyone of their merit. Instead, in his formal statement he ripped a partisan speech right off Joe Biden’s Unity™ teleprompter, opining about the Capitol riot being “an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy” that was “fueled by lies.”

The only thing missing was Biden’s Nazi background.

Trump thought the same thing, calling the indictment “reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s” and a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election.”

Moreover, Trump isn’t charged with the riot, so Smith is the one “fueled by lies.” One of them is a lie by glaring omission. The indictment “quotes Trump in his speech about encouraging people to go to the Capitol Hill, but like the January 6th committee, it omits where he says, ‘you should go peacefully,’” noted George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. “I think that’s a mistake, quite frankly, because it undermines your credibility when you sort of hide the ball on things like that.”

Turley added, “When I take a red pen through material that is protected by the First Amendment, it reduces much of this to a haiku.”

Almost humorously, Smith gave the obligatory and totally disingenuous paean to American justice: “I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.” If only he or any other Democrat believed such things.

Of Smith’s press conference, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy said, “That was one of the most demagogic presentations I have ever seen in a high-profile criminal case.”

As for Smith’s prospects in court, Turley argued, “One of the most ominous elements for Trump may be the likely location as opposed to the specific counts.” So, perhaps the special counsel is playing up January 6 to garner sympathy in the juror pool or from the judge.

Trump will appear before that judge Thursday, and hoo boy what a judge. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was nominated by Barack Obama and donated thousands of dollars to him. Worse, she’s already previously ruled against Trump in an unrelated J6 case, and she’s practically made a sport out of convicting and harshly sentencing J6 defendants.

Fair trial? Try rigged.

In any event, none of the cases against Trump is likely to be fully litigated before the primaries play out.

As for Trump, he sent out a fundraising email that vividly illustrated what has become an unbreakable bond between him and his fervent supporters: “It’s not just my freedom on the line, but yours as well — and I will NEVER let them take it from you.” Given that he’s spending most of his campaign cash on legal defense, he needs all the help he can get from people who understandably don’t believe a word of anything Democrats or their deep state henchmen throw at Trump.

What does this mean for the 2024 election? Who knows?

Obviously, if Trump does win the nomination, time will tell which side benefited from the strategy to help him do so. For his part, McCarthy wrote an essay yesterday titled “Trump Can’t Win.” But historian Victor Davis Hanson says you’re “utterly delusional” if you think the election outcome is a “foregone conclusion,” and veteran political analyst Byron York says it is “entirely possible” that Trump “could go on to win the general election and become President Trump again.”

If that is in fact what happens, there will be a long-overdue reckoning. And it will get ugly.