I Wonder If They Expect Help From Putin, Xi, Netanyahu & Orbán
Late Thursday, Alex Isenstadt reported that Señor T’s campaign “is sending a blunt message to down ballot Republicans who are looking to fundraise for themselves off of the ex-president’s conviction: Back off. Trump’s political operation views the guilty verdict in the New York hush money trial as a small-dollar goldmine— so much so that they are warning other Republicans not to raise money off it and siphon off money that could otherwise go to the Trump campaign. ‘Any Republican elected official, candidate or party committee siphoning money from President Trump’s donors are no better than Judge Merchan’s daughter,’ said Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita. ‘We’re keeping a list, we’ll be checking it twice and we aren’t in the spirit of Christmas.’” Trump’s own campaign claimed to have raised $34.8 million in the hours after the guilty verdict, but that’s almost definately a lie.
Meanwhile, every congressional Republican was sent a list of very specific talking points to use on social media defending the convicted criminal/cult leader… while the campaign itself flooded the internet with fundraising appeals wailing about “this injustice” and all the other bullshit you’ve been hearing since the verdict was read. MAGA Mike asked the Supreme Court to step in and overturn Trump’s guilty verdict. “I think that the Justices on the court— I know many of them personally— I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they'll set this straight... “People now see Donald Trump as a symbol of something. He’s more than just an individual. He’s a symbol of fighting back against this government corruption, the deep state, the bureaucracy and all the rest.”
Shane Goldmacher and Luke Broadwater reported that by yesterday it “quickly became clear that Republicans across the country would not run away from [Trump’s] newfound status as a felon. They would, instead, run on it. Echoing Trump in casting the New York case as a disgraceful sham, Republican candidates and party committees used the first criminal conviction of a former president as a rallying cry— for campaign cash, for congressional hearings and for motivation to vote in November. Whether they were congressional leaders, potential running mates or onetime rivals, prominent Republicans’ speedy alignment behind Trump, with little dissent or discussion, was no surprise for a party that has increasingly made displays of Trumpian loyalty a nonnegotiable requirement. But their ready-made outrage was not just about lining up behind the nominee. It was also about basking in the energy of a party base that remains as adhered to Trump as ever. ‘The base has never been more motivated,’ said Representative Ronny Jackson of Texas, Trump’s former doctor in the White House and a close ally [and a severely addicted and mentally deranged drug addict].
There were virtually no calls among prominent Republicans for Trump to step aside. Trump’s July 11 sentencing date— he could receive probation or up to four years in prison— will be held only days before he is formally nominated at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Those few who offered even muted words of respect for “the legal process” earned immediate rebukes.
Instead, numerous Republican candidates and groups reported a swell of campaign contributions. The Republican campaign arms of both the House and Senate said they had set new highs for the election cycle in terms of online donations. Jackson’s spokeswoman said the Texas congressman had raised 10 times as much as in a typical day. The House speaker set up a new website to split donations with Trump— and gave the URL a shout-out during his Fox News appearance.
“This was never about justice— this is about plastering ‘convicted felon’ all over the airwaves,” Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, who has been auditioning to be Mr. Trump’s running mate, said on CNN. He added, “The only thing that Donald Trump is guilty of is being in the courtroom of a political sham trial.”
Another vice-presidential aspirant, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote on Twitter, “Don’t just get angry about this travesty, get even!” He linked to a Trump donation page.
Rubio and Vance were among eight Senate Republicans who signed a letter on Friday stating that they would no longer confirm Biden administration appointees, fund “non-security related funding” for the administration or allow for expedited passage of Democratic legislation that wasn’t “directly relevant to the safety of the American people.” They wrote that the White House “has made a mockery of the rule of law,” suggesting the false theory that Biden was behind the prosecution.
Meanwhile, House Republicans announced plans to go after prosecutors who had targeted Trump.
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who is a close Trump ally, said he was summoning the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, and one of his prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, to Capitol Hill to answer allegations that they had politicized and weaponized law enforcement against Trump.
Jordan previously clashed with the Manhattan district attorney’s office when he demanded that a former prosecutor testify under subpoena. Bragg sued to try to block the testimony, but the Judiciary Committee prevailed. The former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, was forced to appear at a deposition, but he declined to answer questions, citing his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
President Biden addressed the verdict briefly at the White House for the first time, declaring on Friday, “The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed” and denouncing Trump’s claims of a rigged trial as “dangerous” and “reckless.” As Biden walked out of the room, a reporter shouted that Trump referred to himself as a “political prisoner” and blamed Biden. The president paused, turned, smiled and then kept walking without answering.
On the campaign trail, some Republicans moved swiftly to try to put Democrats on the defensive over the conviction. In Montana and Ohio, conservative states where Democratic senators are on the ballot, Republicans criticized the Democratic incumbents for their silence. The National Republican Senatorial Committee called Senators Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester cowards for not denouncing the trial. House Republicans challenged Democrats similarly in more conservative districts.
It was a different story in the swing House seats occupied by vulnerable Republicans seeking re-election in districts that voted for Biden in 2020. There, Democrats were highlighting Republicans’ continued allegiance to and endorsement of a nominee who is now a felon.
Not far beneath the GOP bravado was simmering concern in some corners that the conviction could damage Trump by turning off all-important independent voters. Trump’s ability to win over voters who dislike both him and Biden is widely seen as a key factor in the race.
“A conviction on 34 felony counts is not a win for anybody,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. “The impact of this conviction is reduced because of the weakness and unpopularity of the alternative. If the Democrats had a stronger nominee, the impact of this case would be more severe.”
Still, Ayres added, “changes at the margins might affect the outcome in swing states.”
Biden’s campaign has not banked heavily on the criminal trial and its results. Rather, the president’s team has focused on abortion rights and the argument that Trump is unworthy of another term because he poses a threat to democracy, citing his refusal to concede the 2020 election and the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Republicans have tried to use the prosecution of Trump in Manhattan— on charges related to hush-money payments made to a porn actress before the 2016 election— to make the threat-to-democracy accusation in reverse.
“If we allow the standard that you can throw your political opponents in jail because they’re doing better than you in an election, it will be the end of this country as we know it,” Vance said.
As though he was responding to Vance, Aaron Blake wrote that The Republican Party’s divorce from the rule of law is complete. “It’s been a slow boil over many years, but this week truly solidified the GOP’s long drift away from the rule of law— and embrace of Trump’s misleading claims about the legal process. Almost without exception, Republicans decried the verdict of Trump’s jury of peers. Even moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who offered vanilla responses to Trump’s indictments last year, decided that Trump has been singled out. Collins also falsely claimed that District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) had promised to prosecute Trump.”
Blake also warned his readers that “it’s going to get ugly. Trump long ago signaled that his 2024 campaign and a potential second term would be about ‘retribution.’ He also spurred a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol with violent rhetoric and false claims about voter fraud. There’s little question that this history and a criminal conviction are a combustible mixture. And it’s already simmering… [S]upporters are already gearing up for an ugly clash. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) called top Justice Department officials and Manhattan prosecutors “an American Gestapo.’ Top Trump influencers referenced the idea of ‘war.’ Republicans called for investigations and prosecutions of those involved in convicting Trump, with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanding testimony from prosecutors. Tucker Carlson again floated the idea that Trump might be ‘killed’ and said, ‘Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.’ A couple of House members posted versions of American flags popularized by Jan. 6 protesters.”
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Trump, it’s that when he’s cornered, he has a tendency to lash out and become more extreme. Not just after the 2020 election; it’s also how Trump responded to the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, quickly summoning Bill Clinton’s accusers to appear at a presidential debate with his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
We should expect plenty more where that came from.
“Trump,” wrote Nicholas Grossman, “is running for president to put himself above the law, and if he wins, it will cause democratic backsliding in the United States like that in Turkey, Hungary, India, [Israel] and elsewhere. With only accusations and indictments against Trump, less invested voters could chalk it up to the he-said/she-said mudslinging of politics, but a jury conviction makes the stakes clearer. And the news is big enough to penetrate information bubbles, so the sort of voters who pay little attention to politics but end up deciding elections will hear about it.”
He also noted that “The trial didn’t turn Trump into some sort of cool outlaw from American folklore. The charges may have helped Trump in the Republican primary, giving wavering partisans a reason to rally to his defense by playing into his and their victimhood complex. But the theory that the indictments secured Trump the nomination is based on an implausible assumption: that Ron DeSantis was such an appealing candidate that his decline in the polls, which started with the formal launch of his campaign— before Trump’s indictments— must have been due to an outside cause, and not because his candidacy was a political bubble inflated by conservative media, especially anti-anti-Trumpers. There is no indication so far that this criminal conviction will get anyone to vote for Trump who wasn’t already planning to.
The trial didn’t generate big protests, despite Trump’s calls.
It didn’t cause political violence, despite Trump’s apparent efforts to incite it.
It didn’t result in an acquittal that allowed Trump’s campaign to discredit the legal system (though if Trump were innocent, an acquittal would arguably show the system working).
It didn’t result in a hung jury, with a Trump fan stubbornly refusing to believe the evidence against him, leading to a mistrial and claims that Trump shouldn’t have been charged.
It didn’t even result in mixed verdicts— guilty on some counts but not on others— lending credence to arguments that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg abused prosecutorial discretion to upcharge Trump with a stretched legal rationale, undermining the case in both court and public opinion.
Nope. Guilty on all counts. Unanimous conviction, including a juror who said he gets his news from Twitter and Truth Social— and they didn’t even need much deliberation.
As soon as the jury announced its verdict, Trump, Republicans, and right-wing media began to lie about the trial— of course. They’ve engaged in the absurd doublethink of claiming Trump couldn’t possibly get a fair look from a jury of New Yorkers because everyone there hates him, just a few days after claiming Trump is so loved in New York that his rally in the Bronx had over 25,000 attendees (it was probably a tenth of that). They have attacked the judge, prosecutors, and the judicial system itself. If they can find out their names, they’ll probably attack members of the jury— hopefully just with words.
But the fact of the conviction is too big to deny. In that way, it’s like COVID and the 2020 election. Trump could distort public understanding of what was happening, but his early-2020 lies that COVID was nothing to worry about couldn’t overcome the medical reality. Since leaving office, he’s gotten the Republican party on board with his big election lie— but no matter how many Republicans falsely claim Trump was unfairly cheated, no matter how much fan fiction QAnon conspiracy theorists create, Joe Biden is now president and Donald Trump is not.
Still, Trump will presumably appeal his Manhattan conviction, and there’s almost no chance the legal process will end before the election. Even with the conviction, Trump can legally run for president and Americans can vote for him if they want.
…[I]f Trump loses in November, it will strengthen rule of law, renew faith in institutions, and reinvigorate pro-democracy forces abroad. Without presidential power to protect himself, or the questions of a presidential candidate on trial to complicate the process, his crimes will finally catch up to him.
Criminal justice shouldn’t depend on electoral outcomes. The institutions of American democracy— in particular Congress, the Republican party, and the courts— shouldn’t have let it get this far. But they failed to stop it.
November is effectively an up-or-down referendum on constitutional democracy, boiled down to whether we should put Trump in the White House or jail. Thanks to prosecutors and a jury in New York, there’s a more definitive picture of exactly what Trump is, and what Americans will be choosing to do to the country if they elect him.
A snap poll from YouGov, released yesterday shows that 50% of Americans— the smarter half— agree with the verdict that the convicted felon is guilty. Just 30% disagree and 19% are unsure. “Americans' immediate reactions are polarized along party lines, with 86% of Democrats but just 15% of Republicans believing the former president is guilty of felony charges. Independents are nearly twice as likely to think he's guilty as to think he's not.”
