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Twelve jurors in New York asked their fellow Americans a simple question: Would you like to elect a convicted felon to the White House?
In Thursday, Donald Trump was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his money laundering trial, a conviction that made him the first former president to be found guilty of crimes in America’s nearly 250-year history.
It was a historic moment in which the US joined other democracies in showing the world that it was prepared to hold its political leaders accountable.
It also represents an earthquake in a presidential election where poll after poll shows Trump the marginal favorite over the incumbent Joe Biden, despite the president’s efforts to move the needle. If that doesn’t do it, maybe nothing will.
The sentencing was scheduled for July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump would become the first convicted felon to be nominated as a party’s presidential candidate. A time traveler visiting from 2014 would be staggered.
Still, the one question on Washington’s mind during the seven weeks of the often pointless trial was: Historians care, journalists care, and late-night comedians certainly care, but will it matter to voters?
Trump took advantage of the fact that television cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, reducing the drama and spectacle offered by the Watergate hearings or the OJ Simpson trial.
Polls consistently show that America is polarized, and most views of Trump are already baked. After all, this is the man who memorably declared that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a single voter. He faces three more criminal cases, though this may be the only one that will come to light before the November election.
One of the most recent polls, conducted by PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist, found that 67 percent of voters said the conviction would not matter to them in the November election, while 76 percent said a not guilty verdict would not influence. About 25 percent of Republicans said they would be even more likely to vote for Trump if he were found guilty by a jury.
A Quinnipiac University National Survey conducted in April found that 21 percent of voters said the conviction would make them less likely to support Trump, while 62 percent said it would not matter.
Every vote counts. In 2016, Trump won the presidency by less than 78,000 votes in three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In 2020, Biden won the presidency by less than 45,000 votes in three states: Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin. That means every issue—from Trump’s culpability for Gaza to the cost of living to bad weather on Election Day—matters in the margins.
Apparently the political class thinks so. A parade of Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, came to court to show their allegiance to the president, with most of the fans dressed in a Trump suit, white shirt and red tie.
This week it was the turn of the Biden campaign to deploy actor Robert De Niro, a man who made his name playing gangsters, to declare Trump the biggest gangster of them all. At one point in New York, De Niro got into a verbal altercation with Trump supporters.
The battle between the legal teams in the courtrooms may be over, but now be prepared for an all-out war in the court of public opinion.
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Trump, who has recently been tempting fate by talking a lot about Al Capone and Hannibal Lecter, inevitably walked out of court on Thursday to declare with a scowl that “this was a rigged trial, a disgrace.”
His campaign will now work around the clock to denigrate the “entitlement” and claim that the judiciary is being weaponized against him by Biden and his cronies. A fundraising email titled “Political Prisoner” sent immediately after the verdict read: “I have just been convicted in a FAKE political witch-hunt trial: I DID NOTHING WRONG!”
In this plea for sacrifice, he has an invaluable ally in the right-wing media, which has spent weeks preparing its viewers for this moment. Judge Jeanine Pirro said on Fox News: “We went through a cliff in America.”
This is all predictable. It’s no secret that millions of Trump voters gave up on the election long ago and won’t budge, or perhaps redouble their faith in him. The tougher question is how his electoral opponent will handle it.
Biden kept the process at a distance to avoid being accused of political interference. But now the ruling stands, with its potential to alienate independent voters. What will Biden tell the nation?
His tone will be decisive. He must then decide how often and how hard to bring up Trump’s criminal conviction on the campaign trail and during their head-to-head debates.
The president’s opponent just handed him the campaign weapon every candidate would dream of. Biden would be wise to use it precisely.
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