In downtown Elkhorn, Wisconsin, a city of 10,000 seated among dairy farms and fields of corn and soyabeans, the historic indictment of Donald Trump had done nothing to dampen the enthusiasm for the former president among volunteers staffing the Republican party county headquarters.

“Politics is a game, and it all gets dirty,” said Andrea Lazzeroni, one of the local Republicans. “Now all of a sudden they want to hold [Trump] up as the example of illegality. Well, he is nothing compared to what some of the other presidents have done.”

Trump carried rural Walworth County, 46 miles south-west of the Democratic bastion of Milwaukee, where Elkhorn is located, by 59 per cent in 2020. It is a world away from lower Manhattan, where the former president sat sombrely in court this week to face 34 counts of falsifying business records.