Trump’s electoral and judicial calendars collide – but it does him little harm

Legal woes that would have buried a candidate have become a feature of Trump's 2024 run as other Republicans hit campaign trail in Iowa

Four candidates were on the campaign trail, meeting and greeting voters in frigid Iowa. A fifth was sitting in a courtroom in rainy Washington, trying to fend off a criminal case that might land him in jail.

But in the upside-down, topsy-turvy world of American politics, it is Donald Trump - not Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson or Vivek Ramaswamy - who is expected to win the first Republican presidential nominating contest in a landslide next week.