Donald Trump’s guilty. Just in general, but also in the more narrow context of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with a porn star.
The verdict in the Manhattan case means tens of millions of Americans, around half of sitting US lawmakers (including the House Speaker) and, in all likelihood, a majority of the Supreme Court, will vote for a convicted felon on Election Day. As Trump put it upon leaving the courtroom, “The real verdict is going to be [on] November 5, by the people.”
A fine sentiment. Except that when “the people” delivered their verdict at the polls in 2020, Trump didn’t accept it. Like due process verdicts, Trump only accepts the verdict from the democratic process when it’s favorable. He’s facing two criminal cases tied to his efforts to subvert the last vote, and thanks in part to a Supreme Court which includes three Trump appointees and the spouses of two “Stop the Steal” advocates, a trial for the federal charges related to his post-2020 election machinations likely won’t happen before the 2024 election.
But it anyway wouldn’t matter. Everyone knows Trump’s “guilty” of everything he’s charged with. His supporters just don’t think the charges constitute crimes. Or shouldn’t constitute crimes in Trump’s case. Or, worse, that the charges are in fact crimes themselves to the extent they stem from, or are a manifestation of, a vast “Deep State” conspiracy to persecute Trump and deprive him of his rights. If the election’s rigged, you’re not a criminal for trying to overturn it, you’re a patriot. And so on.
As a technical matter, guilty verdicts are irrelevant except that Trump may not be able to vote for himself. He could theoretically serve as president from jail. Maybe he could even build his own La Catedral. He’s in the luxury hotel business, after all. He could award the federal contracts to his own companies and throw non-alcoholic bacchanals at his personal prison. Escobar meets Putin meets Berlusconi.
From an election math perspective, it’s not obvious that guilty verdicts matter either. Nate Cohn walked through the results of recent polling which, in his words, does “show that a meaningful number of Trump’s supporters are uncomfortable with the idea of supporting a felon [and] a sliver were even willing to tell a pollster they would vote for Biden if Trump were found guilty.”
That “sliver” — 7% in an eight-month-old New York Times/Siena College battleground poll — “may not seem like a huge number,” Cohn went on, “but anything like it would be decisive in our era of close elections.” A more recent poll, conducted by Marquette Law School, suggested Trump’s lead over Biden nationally would disappear entirely in the event of a guilty verdict in the hush money trial.
Still, Cohn readily conceded that such polling, while perhaps not meaningless, is likely useless. He didn’t use that word, but he could’ve. Trump, Republicans and Fox will swear the trial was rigged the same way they said the election was rigged, and that’ll be sufficient to override cognitive dissonance among the weak-willed: If elections are rigged and the justice system’s biased, voting for Trump is actually a vote for democracy and in support of the rule of law.
Among diehard Trump supporters, criminal charges and guilty verdicts are badges of honor. Trump’s campaign donor website crashed following the verdict. “So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump that the WinRed pages went down,” Trump’s campaign said, in a statement.
I’d call that a publicity stunt if I didn’t know how gullible Trump’s legions of small donors are. That’s surely something they’d do: Line up to hand over what little money they have to a man who’s just been convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying business records.
Trump will obviously appeal the verdict and anyway won’t be sentenced to any jail time. Certainly not in connection with the Stormy Daniels matter, and probably not for anything else either. After all, he’s a model citizen! You can tell because he has no criminal record. Or had no criminal record.
As The New York Times noted, “a psychologist or social worker working for the probation department may talk to Trump” at the pre-sentence interview, during which defendants can “try to make a good impression and explain why he or she deserves a lighter punishment.” (“So, Mr… I’m terribly sorry, let me check my files, I’ve got half a dozen of these to get through today and I’ve forgotten your na– Oh! Here we are. Trump. Mr. Donald Trump. Do you go by Don? Tell me a little bit about yourself, Don.”)
If there’s a saving grace in any of this (and there really isn’t) it’s that the conviction suggests Americans aren’t yet convinced of Trump’s authoritarian bona fides. Simply put: No one’s all that scared of Trump.
The self-preservation instinct would prevent a jury from convicting a real strongman with even odds of returning to power in a mere six months’ time. There’s a reason it took so long to convict John Gotti. It wasn’t all charisma, nor was it Gotti’s absurd Robin Hood credentials.
For now, Americans don’t seem too worried about the retribution Trump’s promised to exact if he’s reelected. And yet, we might’ve learned by now that Trump generally means what he says.
Eric Lach, writing for The New Yorker, recounted the moments before the verdict was delivered: “The twelve jurors marched in through a side door at the front of the room. Trump stood and watched as they passed just feet from him. But none of them would look him in the eye.”
Mar-La-Catedral has a certain ring to it, but likely to trip up Trump’s golden tongue. But if your Escobar parallel holds, the escape and pursuit of Felonious D might rival “Midnight Run” in hilarity.
The title of this piece is enough to keep me in good spirits through the weekend.
I hope people get the pun. Most won’t.
We get you H
You’re a fan of Jazz? Or am I missing the pun?
Well, and then there are the minions!
It’s a pun in more than one way. ?? “Felonious, my old friend, step on in and let me shake your hand…” ??? … described on the album cover as “The cruiser and his crony out for a last fling”. Let’s hope this felonious chump is over the hill soon, too.
Lol, your comment form converted my music note emojis to question marks. Where’s the edit button?
I hate to admit it, but I immediately thought of Thelonious Monk- and cringed at the thought of degrading his amazing musical gifts to the world by thinking of DT in the same thought.
So I didn’t get it.
Wall Street naturally sympathizes with any white-collar criminal. You know, there but for the grace . . .
This is will near zero impact on anything. Simply because everyone knows pretty much what they want to know about him, and everyone’s mind has been made up. Also because people that will vote for him do so for their own reasons or agenda. And people that vote against him already knew everything there is to know.
It’s the case for me, I’ve made up my mind a long time ago about him, you just listen to him for a few minutes and you realize the low IQ, high emotional immaturity, lack of attention to a topic and on and on.
And now to the surprising thing though, I will vote for him. The democratic party and so-called liberals lost me on the vaccine mandates. My body my choice, yeah right.
Trump will destroy the wilderness I cherish, will breed violence and stupid thinking, but he won’t force me to submit to a medical treatment and a foverer alteration of my body. And with my health history, this is a more urgent issue for me.
Let alone that the democtratic party wants me to vote for a man that is clearly ready for a retirement home, that has done really little of note, a party that had one of the most amazing leaders ever (Obama) and could do so little with that, a party that now believes it’s a good idea to spread nanoparticles in the sky to stop the sun rays, and that mrna should be used to “improve ourselves”. I am happy as I am, keep your arrogance to yourself thank you.
I will vote for a guy I have zero respect for. That’s how bad things are.
Not trying to be glib or make light, but are you so sure your health history is in benevolent hands with Trump? We may never know unless he finally comes out with his better, cheaper health plan, probably in about two weeks. All we’ve seen so far is injecting bleach or UV light, the partisan rationing of respirators, and the Kushners profiting off the ACA. I’d rather vote for Biden and consult an indigenous medicine man, personally.
Trump literally created the vaccines, Peter. And talk about compelling people to “alter their bodies,” Trump openly brags of raping women (a “pussy grab” is rape in my book and in a lot of women’s books too, I’d venture), talks of murdering his political rivals, encourages his supporters to commit random acts of violence against civilians (which is to say he’s a terrorist on a textbook definition) and suggested to his subordinates that protesters (American citizens) should be shot in the legs, among other things. I don’t know, but all of that seems pretty intrusive in terms of “forcing people to submit” to the “forever alteration” of their bodies. Maybe ask a woman who had her “pussy grabbed” about Trump’s respect for people’s bodies and their rights in that regard. And forgive me, but you sound a little unhinged regarding the vaccines and the mini-rant about nanoparticles. Vaccine mandates are a good thing, generally speaking. The goal is utilitarian. If you’re not on board with it, well, that’s too bad. The same principle applies to any rule established in the interest of the public well-being. A lot of people don’t like leash laws, but guess what? Too bad, so sad. Put your dog on a leash or get a ticket. And vaccines are one of mankind’s greatest scientific accomplishments. If there are super-intelligent aliens looking down on us somewhere, I can assure you they view anti-vaxxers as among the stupidest of our anyway ignorant species. Finally, the idea that Joe Biden would support forcing you, Peter, personally, to get a vaccine that you can plausibly say would jeopardize your health is ludicrous. Maybe Biden would say, in a generalized sense, that in instances where a vaccine’s mandated, nobody’s “special,” but the notion that Trump cares more about your individual health than Biden suggests to me that in fact, you don’t have a good read on Trump. If Trump had to choose between getting a stubbed toe and you losing both your arms forever, you’d be armless.
I always want to tell vaccine deiners this: go show me an American kid with polio or small pox. Can’t? No kidding!
The original comment is vexing and even worrying, so I tried to go gentle and you went armless. And now I just had my best laugh of the day. But no need to despair — in some circles, armlessness is considered merely a flesh wound.
Sorry to reply to my reply. but the flip side of this vaccine denial and Fauci crucifixion seems almost an afterthought now that we’ve all survived. But we forget the healthcare strains, the refrigerated trucks, the last goodbyes through windows or via Zoom calls, not to mention the casket shortages and the orphans. Some 1.2 million Americans are no longer around to read this blog, among other things. That is a body count simply without any precedent. I’ve spent much of my adult life not really being able to fathom the Vietnam War’s 60,000 body count. Does it help if we describe Covid as 20 simultaenous Vietnams crammed into 1/3rd of the time?
As you say, everyone’s mind is made up.
But I don’t think vaccine mandates applied to people with health conditions that made such vaccine a danger to them? Now, there’s a limit there since you cannot let everyone self declare they are allergic to the vaccine and would risk their lives taking it. But genuine cases were likely respected. It was the case in France at least. Like, I don’t think anyone forced known immunodeficient patient to get vaccinated?
“my body, my choice”
Abortions aren’t contagious.
The felon, in his capacity as President of the United States, posted on social media a video of a man shouting “White power! White power!” and talked effusively about how much he loved that man.
And you’re voting for him.
That’s all that needs be said.
None of your comments other matter. You saw that, and shrugged, and said, “Hey, it’s not a problem for me. I can support that.” Enough said.
By the way, it’s wasn’t “your body”. You don’t have the “right” to go out and pass a fatal disease to my family. That’s my family’s bodies, not yours. Your right to transmit a fatal disease ends where my body begins.
Nobody ever forced you to get a vaccine. That never happened. But you wanted to go out and risk killing your neighbors by infecting them with a fatal disease. What kind of sociopath votes for an open white supremacist because he thinks his “rights” are being violated because he’s prohibited from transmitting a death sentence to my family?
You could have stayed home and never gotten the vaccine. Nobody ever forced you to put something into your body. The misnamed vaccine “mandates” were only a problem for people who thought it was their “right” to voluntarily go out into public and gamble with peoples’ very lives, and the very lives of everyone those people came into contact with, and the very lives of everything those people came into contact with…
I feel bad for the jurors, but good for them for having the courage of their convictions. You know they will be hounded by the Trump acolytes and I don’t think I’d be brave enough to participate in that jury knowing that.
As for polling, I’m highly skeptical of the numbers right now for a number of reasons, but I suspect that Trump followers have changed their tune about polling and are now more likely to respond than they had in the past in order to register their disapproval for Biden and support for Trump, especially among younger cohorts.
On the flip side, I expect women to show up and be more highly represented on election day. All that to say, I think there is a high likelihood of Biden and Democrats outperforming polls in November.
He was convicted for altering business records that would have negatively reflected on his ability to be elected in the first place.
Why this connection is not repeatedly made I have no idea.
It took the jury 11 hours to convict. Less time than all the bitching time he spent trying to discredit the trial.
I think the outpouring of threats will create a rich identifying list for law enforcement investigators. Reduces our risks.
Exactly, eleven hours. That’s lunch and a bathroom break for twelve jurors, then maybe an hour of deliberation. The evidence was overwhelming. Any twelve jurors trying to do their civic duty would’ve reached the same conclusion. And for folks worried that Convicted Felon skates on appeal, don’t. Merchan ran a good, clean trial; the appellate court in NYS won’t even entertain an appeal.