The real verdict on Donald J Trump’s innocence or guilt will happen on November 5. That’s the judgment of the ex-president’s people, the current president’s people, and a whole lot of pundits.
Oh boy! “Everybody knows.” Or do we?
Five months have to pass before we learn those general election results; five months where anything can and will happen. Trump can’t appeal until a sentence is rendered just a few days before the 2024 Republican National Convention begins.
There is plenty to chew on in the meantime.
The Los Angeles Times ran with a front page story about how we don’t know how the verdict will impact Republicans running for House seats in California. Maybe this, maybe that. Who knows? What a boatload of crap.
What does matter are the promises by elected Republicans to jam up congress (again) until President Biden does something… which he couldn’t do even if he wanted, because it’s a STATE court conviction.
On the inside pages of the Times, LZ Granderson had some truth to share in a column about how Trump had gone full Bond villain via his bromance with Elon Musk.
Republicans like House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who after the verdict on Thursday said “today is a shameful day in American history,” can try to characterize the hush money trial as “the weaponization of our justice system,” but the reality is Trump has been in trouble with our legal system since Johnson was in diapers. I’m not joking. The saga began in 1973 with the Nixon administration. By now, Trump’s been involved in 4,095 lawsuits and counting .
He is not a victim being unfairly targeted by Democrats.
Trump is a con artist who keeps getting caught
Trumpanistas predicted the stock market would crash after a guilty verdict; it had one of its better days this year instead. They boldly claimed a guilty verdict would help their leader rise in public polling. All this prophesying, amid a torrent of venom aimed at undermining public trust in the processes of democracy didn’t have its desired effect, at least for a day or two after the verdict.
Fox News went full-on batshit crazy.
Judge Jeanie reminded everybody that Stormy Daniels is a hooker.
Jesse Watters compared Trump to a Greek tragedy and called it a Soviet show trial.
Marco Rubio said Trump was being fed to the lions.
Laura Ingram invited people to shop at Banana Republic, because elections will never be the same.
Mike Davis said the verdict guarantees a Trump win.
Hannity said if they can do this to Trump, they can do it to anyone.
Mark Levin said SCOTUS needs to take up this case! Soros D.A.’s are destroying the federal election system.
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Now, the first round of public polling is out, and the news is decidedly a lot more mixed than the party of Trump would like.
Before I mention polling numbers, I think it’s worthwhile to say that a majority of Americans haven’t made up their minds about anything appearing on the general election ballot.
This is why the New York Times polls showing Trump ahead of Biden shouldn’t be much of a factor for any strategy or tactics for partisans. The way to win an electoral contest is to work hard to get voters to the polls who feel your particular candidate is better than the opponent, (or, better yet, the nation) not whining about things you can’t control..
A Reuters poll of 2,556 adults taken after the verdict shows 10% of registered voters are less likely to vote for Donald Trump and 25% of independent registered voters also feel that way.
Via Politico:
There are no crosstabs available, so it’s unclear if the voters turned off by the conviction are within some of the the key swing groups identified by a mass of polling this year: young voters, nonwhite voters and less-engaged voters. But in the head-to-head, President JOE BIDEN was up by two points, 41% to 39%.
The numbers stand as counterpoint to the GOP bravado, led by the Trump campaign, about how Trump’s 34 felony convictions and potential jail sentence will have no effect on the election.
A Morning Consult poll conducted on Friday found a significant minority of Republicans (15%) and independents (49%) want Trump to drop out of the race. And a majority of registered voters (54%) strongly" or "somewhat" approve of the guilty verdict compared to 34% who "strongly or "somewhat" disapprove.
A YouGov snap poll conducted soon after the verdict was announced, 50% of the 3,040 U.S. adults who were polled said they believed Trump was guilty, while 30% said they believed he was not guilty. Another 19% said they were not sure. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.3%.
Broken down by party affiliation, 15% of Republicans think he is guilty while 64% do not, 48% of independents think Trump is guilty while 25% do not, and 86% of Democrats believe he is guilty while 5% do not.
Although much of the American news media hasn’t caught on yet, Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is light years away from his earlier efforts. For one, his legal expenses –being paid for by campaign donations– have overcome the trappings of success in which he wrapped himself in the past.
Gone, mostly, are the large stadiums and arenas for rallies. Sometimes so are the massive crowds the campaign liked to brag about. The events that are taking place are notable for the large numbers of people leaving during his oratory. It’s as if his celebrity status is the main draw, not the content of his speeches. Plus his history of stiffing localities continues to haunt him.
Trump’s reckoning in Manhattan has also influenced his influencers. Revenge is a common theme, sometimes stretching legal limits. Podcaster Tim Poole hit the kill switch on his show with Laura Loomer when she one-upped his call to jail liberals with a suggestion that they be executed.
Heritage’s 2025 plan for a Trump administration is gaining wider circulation. Despite dancing around some of the more extreme examples when the campaign is questioned by the media, the fact that these types of authoritarian schemes are even mentioned is progress.
The phrase “rule of law” has been bandied about since the verdict, as if the prosecution and conviction of the ex-president was somehow a validation of the American system.
At How Things Work, Hamilton Nolan correctly disputes this notion:
This general principle of good government was on my mind as I watched the Republican Party unite as one to wail about the injustice perpetrated upon convicted felon Donald Trump in that New York courtroom this week.
What we winkingly refer to as “the justice system” is at the very top of the list of things that rich and powerful people are not subjected to in the same way as everyone else. It is the most pervasive and the most devastating example of this principle in action. If you can afford a lawyer, your sentence will be lighter. If you can afford bail, you will not sit in jail. If you can afford a nice home in a nice neighborhood it will be generally understood by police that their job is to work for you and not against you.
In every aspect of its operation, our system of crime and punishment produces vastly nicer outcomes for the rich than for the rest of us. A private state prison full of poor people sitting not far from where Donald Trump frolics freely at Mar-a-Lago is a child’s picture book-style illustration of this whole thing in action. Here is where we send the regular crooks, and there is where we send the rich crooks.
Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer took the long view, saying the trial of Donald J. Trump was a reference point on just how far the nation has moved away from the checks and balances and rule of law.
One of the things that the Trump trial revealed is how much America has changed in exactly 50 years since Watergate and the resignation of the last thoroughly criminal president, Richard Nixon. That year saw one huge mistake — successor Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, which only boosted the fiction that a president is above the law — but 1974 also showed how back then, the system largely did work. Congress members from both parties probed White House crimes and voted for impeachment. The Supreme Court was unanimous in forcing Nixon to turn over his tapes. Some news outlets, like the Washington Post and CBS, were aggressive in chasing the truth.
In 2024, the system is largely not working. A corrupted, partisan federal judiciary slow-walks Trump’s other cases. Milquetoast newsroom leaders are too afraid of bias allegations to fight for democracy. The Republican Party has become a dangerous cult that uses threats of retribution or even violence to enforce discipline. It took 14 Americans outside of these warped elite circles — Judge Merchan, DA Bragg, and the 12 citizens who served on the jury — to finally put the brakes on a naked Trump’s seemingly unstoppable crime spree.
There is so much more than a presidential race going on in 2024. Much of the billionaire class has dropped all pretenses about The American Way and is actively supporting a man who, like themselves, sees himself as above the rule of law.
Is 2024 the beginning of the end? Or the end of the beginning? And what are we ending?
The end of a con man’s nation-changing career? Or the end of the American Experiment?