As expected, Donald Trump and his supporters tried to spin the verdict moments after a New York jury pronounced him guilty Thursday on all 34 felony counts in his hush money trial.
The former president said the criminal case was rigged from the start, that Joe Biden, the Democrat who unseated him in 2020, had orchestrated the prosecution, and that the conviction is more evidence of corruption in the courts and the country as a whole.
Undoubtedly, the verdict won’t change the minds of the Republican’s base. As has been repeatedly shown over the past 3½ years, those on the far right are with him no matter what — overlooking all of the baggage, two impeachments and now the first-ever conviction of a former president — because he speaks to their unhappiness with the country’s changing economy, changing culture and changing demographics.
Spin it, though, as Trump might, the verdict is fairly damning for the defense that he and his lawyers put up. Rather than acknowledging the affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, one a former porn star, the other a former Playboy model, that Trump tried to cover up, the defense peddled the lie that the extramarital sexual liaisons never occurred — almost certainly a condition imposed on his attorneys by their client. Although they tried to convince the jurors that the prosecution’s witnesses, most notably Daniels and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, couldn’t be believed, in the back of the jurors’ minds was almost certainly the conclusion that Trump and his defense team were the most obvious fabricators. The defense only had to convince one juror — just one — that the prosecution’s case had holes in it, that the hush-money payments were designed to avoid private embarrassment and had little to do with his 2016 run for president, and Trump would have walked out a winner. They could not do even that.
And this was the weakest — and the least serious — of the four criminal cases against the former president. Even if the conviction stands, and even if he draws a prison sentence, it won’t keep him from continuing his bid to reclaim the White House, since a state felony conviction is not a disqualifier to federal office. What would be are convictions in the two federal cases against him — one for absconding with classified documents when he left the White House and then allegedly trying to obstruct their recovery; the other for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the Capitol in an effort to block the certification of Biden’s victory.
It’s too bad that neither of those two federal prosecutions will apparently go to trial before the November rematch, since neither judge in the case seems all that anxious to determine whether Trump should be legally disqualified from ever holding public office again.
It’s also too bad that the Republican Party — fully aware of the mountain of Trump’s legal problems — could not find a way to loosen his grip on their party. Instead, those who should have known better in Congress and in many state capitals capitulated to him, leaving better GOP candidates without the support that could have led to their nomination during this year’s primaries.
Say what you will about Joe Biden. Certainly he is a flawed president who, at his age, should not have sought a second term. But he has this going for him: zero impeachments, zero criminal indictments and zero criminal convictions.
It’s a low standard, admittedly. But it’s a standard for the presidency, the highest office in this nation, to which the Republican Party has been sadly unwilling to hold its nominee.
