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WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump faces 37 federal charges that could send him to prison for the remainder of his life, but it’s the rest of the Republican field that’s in the most immediate political trouble.

Advisers working for Trump’s opponents are facing what some consider an infuriating task: trying to persuade Republican primary voters, who are inured to Trump’s years of controversies and deeply distrustful of the government, that being criminally charged for holding on to classified documents is a bad thing.

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In previous eras, the indictment of a presidential candidate would have been, at a minimum, a political gift for the other candidates, if not an event that spelled the end of the indicted rival’s run. Competitors would have thrilled at the prospect of the front-runner spending months tied up in court, with damaging new details steadily dripping out. And they still could be Trump’s undoing. If he does not end up convicted before November 2024, his latest arrest is not likely win him converts in the general election.

But Trump’s competitors — counterintuitively, according to the old conventional political wisdom — are actually dreading what threatens to be an endless indictment news cycle that could swallow up the summer. His rivals are desperate to get media coverage for their campaigns, but since the indictment became public on June 8, as several advisers grumbled, the only way they can get their candidates booked on television is for them to answer questions about Trump.

Trump is making full use of the trappings of his former office: the big, black SUVs; the Secret Service agents in dark glasses; the stops at grocery stores and restaurants with entourages, bodyguards and reporters in tow, said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chair who works on Nikki Haley’s campaign.

“That is powerful stuff when you’re campaigning against it,” Dawson said.

And there’s no end in sight for indictment season. This was the second time Trump has been indicted in two months, and he may be indicted at least once more this summer, in Georgia, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Georgia prosecutor leading that investigation signaled the timing when she announced last month that most of her staff would work remotely during the first three weeks of August — right when Republican presidential candidates will be preparing for the first debate of the primary season, on Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.

In Trump’s federal case, in South Florida, it is possible that the former president could face trial in the middle of the primary campaign season.

Most of Trump’s other rivals have tied themselves in knots trying to fashion responses to the indictments that would grab media attention without alienating Republican voters who remain supportive of Trump.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came down on Trump’s side but with little enthusiasm. He subtly rebuked Trump’s conduct, raising Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents as a stand-in for Trump’s when he said he would have been “court-martialed in a New York minute” had he taken classified documents during his service in the Navy.

But DeSantis has also used the opportunity to give Republican voters what they mostly want: He has defended Trump and attacked President Joe Biden and his Justice Department, saying they unfairly target Republicans. On Tuesday, DeSantis began to roll out his plan to overhaul the “weaponized” FBI and Justice Department. And the main pro-DeSantis super PAC released a video attacking the “Biden DOJ” for “indicting the former president.”

Before the indictment was released, former Vice President Mike Pence said on CNN that he hoped Trump would not be charged because it would “be terribly divisive to the country.”

Then Pence read the indictment. On Tuesday, he told The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, “These are very serious allegations. And I can’t defend what is alleged. But the president is entitled to his day in court, he’s entitled to bring a defense, and I want to reserve judgment until he has the opportunity to respond.”