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Dana Milbank reported from the scene that after hearing “guilty” on all 34 felony counts, Trump, the man who always has something to say, was at a loss. In a 98-second statement delivered with “downcast eyes,” he eked out five allegations that the decision was rigged, but not much else.
Perhaps that’s because, as Jim Geraghty observes, something significant shifted with this decision: “Trump’s legendary run of good luck and Houdini-like ability to escape the consequences of his actions ended.” Keep in mind that Trump needed only one holdout juror for a mistrial; the man has always been rescued by somebody.
(“Did Trump just lose his Teflon armor?” Alexi McCammond wondered in an emergency edition of her Prompt 2024 newsletter, for which she convened conservative Jason Willick and progressive E.J. Dionne to discuss trial fallout.)
Jim likens the situation to Road Runner at last caught by Wile E. Coyote. (The judiciary might bristle at the notion that it’s prone to running headlong into cliffs painted to look like tunnels.) But the inviolable maxim of Looney Tunes is that Road Runner always, always gets away. Jim isn’t convinced the convictions will ding Trump in the long run.
Apparently, neither is the Trump team. Its officials maintain that the conviction won’t do much to sway a race that’s close and likely to stay that way. The main takeaway of the jury’s ruling, one cynical official told Karen Tumulty, is that “we’ll go raise $10 million off of it.”
(Alexandra Petri imagines that fundraising email: “A so-called JURY OF HIS PEERS (absurd! the man is peerless!) dared to pass judgment on Donald J. Trump as though he were an ORDINARY CITIZEN, SUBJECT TO LAWS, and not the GOD-KING OF AMERICA THAT HE WAS AND SHALL BE!” )
Interestingly, Karen reports, President Biden’s campaign seems to agree on the race’s stasis, focusing in an initial statement less on the verdict and more on what lies ahead. Karen previews what the next moves are for a team that has spent the past six weeks blocked by wall-to-wall trial coverage.
The truth is, as the Editorial Board points out, many of Trump’s supporters have long believed the fix was in, and still “many other Americans did not need a trial to form an equally firm view that Mr. Trump is amoral or worse.”
It’s hard to think of a public figure about whom impressions are more baked to a crisp. That’s why a new poll’s revelation that the majority of Americans will shrug off a conviction can be both “the most astonishing result of the day,” as the board writes, and no surprise at all.
There’s a universe in which Trump’s troubles would be harder to disregard. Ruth Marcus writes: “If the system had worked as it should have, voters would be faced with the prospect of electing a man convicted of an array of crimes in three separate indictments.”
Unfortunately, in our universe, a slow-walking Trump-appointed judge has delayed the Mar-a-Lago documents case, and a lackadaisical Supreme Court has allowed procedural feints to hold up the trial concerning Jan. 6, 2021. Ruth finds both of these cases more persuasive than the hush money one.
She makes clear, however, in a final legal analysis of the hush money trial that the whole thing proceeded unimpeachably: “The jury’s verdict is entitled to substantial, indeed almost conclusive, respect.” She just worries that the prosecutors’ decision to shoehorn the case’s “ugly facts into the confines of the state’s falsifying business records law” makes the verdict vulnerable to appeal.
Of course, the other way Trump could reverse the verdict is by getting himself elected president. As Jen Rubin warns, “Trump would then insist that the will of the voters and his right to assume power override any state sentence. His docile Supreme Court majority would likely agree.”
Ultimately, no conviction can keep Trump out of the White House. The indefatigable Eugene Robinson pre-wrote a separate column for each of the three possible jury outcomes — conviction, acquittal or mistrial — but the conclusion of each was the same.
“The justice system was never going to bail us out of this mess,” he writes. “We have to do that in November with our votes.”
Chaser: Ready for a little indigestion? Analyzing new polling, Ramesh Ponnuru writes that the voters who will decide the election are the ones paying the least attention. The gap between the informed and the disengaged is a chasm, and it’s widening.
Bonus chaser: For an even livelier overview of what we’re thinking in the trial’s wake, listen to Ruth, Dana and Karen on the “Impromptu” podcast, recorded right after the verdict.
Less politics, please!
Here’s a palate cleanser: Despite my willingness to have sworn that cicadas were only supposed to come out once every 17 years or so, the wretched beings are about to be back.
If anyone can find anything cute in them, it’s Edith Pritchett. Enjoy her cartoon about how we’re not so different from the bugs.
Smartest, fastest
- The GOP’s fight to hide the cost of its next tax cut has already begun, Catherine Rampell reports.
- With two women on the presidential ballot in Mexico, León Krauze hopes the election of a historic first will push the country toward a more constructive politics.
- George Will writes that menthol cigarettes are a health menace — and a Biden election-year problem.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Once thought gone, now back
With an ever-bigger brood —
Trump or cicada?
Plus! A Friday bye-ku (Fri-ku!) from reader Peter F.:
He lies without thought
Now backed into a corner
He has no trump card
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. My editor, Amanda Katz, will start you off next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend!
