WASHINGTON – The bravado behind Donald Trump’s arrogant 2016 hypothetical—“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn’t lose any voters”—is heading toward a real-world reckoning.
So far, at least, he was strangely right. Through his two impeachments, his desperate agitations to remain in power after losing the last elections, and the wide range of criminal charges against him, from Florida to Georgia, from Washington to New York, Trump maintained his dominance among his acolytes and of the majority of the population. Republican party.
But now he is the first president in history to carry the stain of a felony conviction. Will this matter in the November elections?
After the condemnatory verdict, everyone seemed to run to the party walls. But this is uncharted territory for Americans – this finding of criminal behavior signed, sealed and delivered by unanimous jurors against the only man to have been the subject of both a presidential portrait and a mugshot.
Even some staunch anti-Trumpers don’t count on convictions making a difference. “Prepare for a criminal president,” said Joan Marks, a 58-year-old Democrat who made her grim prediction of a Trump victory while standing outside Manuel’s Tavern, a popular liberal hangout near the presidential library. by Jimmy Carter in Atlanta.
Contributions flowed into Trump’s campaign — more than $1 million for each of the 34 convictions, his officials said.
The case will go down in history as “The People of the State of New York vs. Donald J. Trump.” But after the verdict, as before, top Republicans and a variety of like-minded voters saw it as just another blatant example of Us vs. Them.
“Political persecution at the highest level,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, the Republican candidate for governor. Republican Party chairmen in South Carolina, Illinois and New York each attacked “banana republic” justice.
There was much talk from other high-ups in the party about a “sham” trial, “fraudulent verdict”, “kangaroo court” and Soviet-style shenanigans, as if apparatchiks had handed down the 34 convictions rather than a jury whose 12 members were selected by the defense and the prosecution.
Even Moscow weighed in, alongside Trump. “As far as Trump is concerned, it is quite obvious that the effective removal of political opponents by all legal and illegal means is underway and the whole world can see this with the naked eye,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov .
Trump’s initial reaction to the verdict suggested he will wear his conviction like a crown, and there were already signs of retribution against any Republican who dared defend the trial.
Shortly before the verdict, Larry Hogan, the anti-Trump Republican Senate candidate in Maryland and former governor, published a plea to all Americans to accept the jury’s decision, whatever the outcome, and added: “At this time dangerously divided from our history. , all leaders – regardless of party – must not add fuel to the fire with more toxic partisanship.”
Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, responded to X: “You just ended your campaign.”
Among the voters, Justin Gonzalez, a 21-year-old student and tutor in the border city of McAllen, Texas, said he learned something quite troubling about Trump at the trial. “He is many things, but I never thought of him as a liar,” he said. “I think it would change my perception of him.”
Yet as he prepares to vote in his first presidential election, Gonzales cares more about immigration enforcement than the nasty business centered on covering up payments to silence a pornographic actor. “Of all the other issues, this one is still bad, but it’s not enough to convince me to vote for Biden.”
An ABC-Ipsos poll conducted in late April revealed that 80% of Trump supporters said they would support him even if he were convicted of a crime in the hush money case. Only 4% said they would withdraw their vote, although 16% said they would reconsider. In an election expected to be close, even small changes in support can make a difference.
In the Lower Manhattan courthouse, the first president to come to power, driven by tabloid fame and reality television, faced the latest tabloid-style accusations, and yet, in a story for our time, he is the Republicans’ presumptive nominee for president.
With his ever-present sense of spectacle – although there was no television broadcast of the proceedings – Trump turned the trial into a re-election campaign stage as best he could.
He has had success in other contexts when using his megaphone – shouting at his opponents, attacking them on social media, branding them with demeaning nicknames – but this time some of his normal moves were unavailable to him. He had no control of the situation. He could not simply set aside the strictures of a court and the plain language of the law. He tried occasionally and the judge ordered him to keep quiet, giving him fines and threats of worse. Mostly he glowered, and sometimes he looked zen or sleepy.
New Yorkers weren’t used to seeing this happen to Trump. Love him or hate him — and there is little in between — they have long considered him an escape artist through career-spanning tangles of legal, business and political thorns.
This time he didn’t escape.
“Finally, some accountability,” said Nadine Striker, who celebrated the verdict at a public lake across the street from the courthouse, about a mile from Fifth Avenue. She held up a large banner reading “TRUMP CONVICTED” and wore a headband holding a hand-sized cutout of Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor.
In November 1973, Richard Nixon declared to a meeting of newspaper editors in chief at the Associated Press cooperative: “I am not a crook.” At the time, in the Watergate scandal that ended up consuming his presidency, it seemed like he could be exactly that.
But for Nixon this issue was never put to the test in court. With Trump, it has been.
Still, with Trump, you never know. He might still have a little Harry Houdini in him.
“Anyone else would go to jail,” Striker said. “I don’t expect him to go.”
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Associated Press writers Cedar Attanasio in New York, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, and Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.
