Donald Trump is now under indictment. I understand that we can’t give presidents a pass for committing crimes, but I wish it were for something other than a campaign finance violation from seven years ago. I wish he was being indicted for financial crimes or trying to overturn the election. I suspect a trial with Stormy Daniels will have more tabloid appeal, but I’m not too confident of a conviction.
From a political standpoint, I think the indictments help Republicans, especially in a state like North Carolina. Indicting Trump may further his alienation of middle of the road voters, but it will also fire up his base. In North Carolina, I think there are more people who will be motivated to go to the polls to express their anger at what they see as a witch hunt than there are people in the middle.
In election after election, Republicans in our state outperform Democrats by between five and ten percentage points. In a state that’s as closely divided as ours, that advantage in enthusiasm is enough to overcome the margin swing voters can give Democrats, especially in low-turnout elections. We saw that phenomenon in 2022 when exit polls indicate Cheri Beasley won the moderate voters by about six points but Republican turnout outstripped Democratic turnout by about ten points. The result was a three point victory for Ted Budd.
I don’t think Trump’s indictment or trials will motivate the young people or African American voters to go to the polls. Younger people probably won’t pay that much attention and African Americans are more skeptical of the criminal justice system. Trump’s problems will only fire up the people on the left who are already engaged. It won’t draw people into the process. It might even discourage younger people from voting if the media narrative gets muddied enough. They may think, “Yeah, this guy’s a crook, but so are all of other politicians. This whole thing is just politics.”
Maybe the indictment over hush money and the others that could be coming down will be enough to keep Trump off the ballot altogether. The GOP base has about a year to turn on him. It hasn’t happened yet, but a year is an eternity in politics. In that case, the Trump bump won’t happen at all, leaving Republicans dependent on persuading the middle that they have returned from the brink and hoping that Democratic enthusiasm is muted with an 82-year-old incumbent nominee.
I’m not going to argue about the rule of law or holding power accountable. I’m just trying to gage the political fallout from putting Trump on trial. The conservative media is going to blast indictments as partisan and blame Democrats and the mainstream media. That’s a story line they’ve been pushing since Trump’s 2016 campaign. It fits their victimization narrative of a huge establishment conspiracy trying to keep a populist fighter out of power. In North Carolina, that message has worked well enough to give Republicans a narrow edge.
He’s facing 34 counts of fraud in just this trial alone. Somebody added it up and came up with 126 years in prison. And that’s before Fani Willis or the Feds even get started. There’s enough “there” there to keep him on trial for the term of his natural life, which is the second best outcome of all this. The first best being that he never sees the light of day again.
Millions of us wanted Trump locked up for being a crude slob, a notorious con man and grifter. That was 40 years before he became a traitor who tried to install himself as fascist dictator.
I wonder what type of man would spend millions to hire legal experts, then disregard their advice. Trump has been denying taking the classified documents when he left the white house, last night he admitted taking the documents, but they were declassified as he declassified them by merely thinking about them. Of Course, in the real world, the documents never belonged to Trump, they are the property of the people of the United States. That man has got to be a fool or a narcissist or both who believes he is the smartest man who ever walked this earth. The point is the prisons are full of men who considered themselves smarter than the rest of us. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu, said. “It is the unemotional, reserved, calm, detached warrior who wins, not the hothead seeking vengeance and not the ambitious seeker of fortune.” Trump repeatedly shown himself to be an out-of-control hot head seeking revenge. He will loose and continue to loose as he has done through out his life.
Alphonse Gabriel Capone. Remember him? Well, the name and the notoriety perhaps. I think if one has the desire and will search the information repositories of the web, they would find that Al Capone aka ‘Scarface’, who found himself accused of many heinous crimes across the length and breadth of his infamous history eventually ended up being convicted of tax evasion. A crime miniscule if you consider the gravity of the crimes he was accused or suspected of but could never quite be brought to trial on. Sometimes you’ve got to take what you can get.
The Greater ramifications are that democrats just couldn’t help themselves and get over their TDS and have now placed the USA in third world republic status.
I mean is Trump worth all this… Really? He is not going to win and the entire electorate is sick and tired of the damned geratric Boomers ( of which Biden and Trump are members) screwing things up and are wishing they would GO THE HELL AWAY ALREADY. Its enough!
And now to keep things “even and fair, (and to exact payback) think of all the prosecutions of democrats that will be undertaken because as you know Everyone is equal under the law. Some of them committed REAL Crimes and got away with it.
I guess this has been brewing a long time, and it has to start somewhere.
As for the case…Lol I think the prosecutor has a nice cushy job after he destroys his legal career.
The entire thing is clown shoes, but we’ve been clown world for a while.
I agree with Mills, I wished the NY Case were a bit stronger, but it is what it is. What will make it stronger if the DA can prove a felony. This is tricky as the DA must prove Trump’s state of mind at the time, he performed the acts constituting the financial fraud, he was motivated by an attempt to commit election violations. Trump’s excuse was he was attempting to prevent his extramarital affairs from becoming known to his spouse. Something he should have considered prior to engaging in them! Moreover, an unusual objective for Trump as he has engaged in such activities in the past and with more than one partner. His historical social butterfly persona can establish his state of mind coupled with his now famous “Access Hollywood” statement on how he treats women cannot be erased.
These state of mind issues are common in other crimes, such as receiving stolen property. The Defendant merely had to demonstrate he intended to acquire what he thought was stolen property. Whether the property was stolen or not makes no difference, only the defendant’s belief that the property was stolen.
But this NY case is merely the beginning. The Feds investigation is stronger. Evidence by way of closed-circuit camera footage and witness statements show Trump going through the boxes of classified files and moving them around after he represented via his attorneys that he was not in possession of such files. Moreover, Trump’s involvement in the Jan 6 caper is becoming clearer each day. If Republican’s permit the Georgia DA to do her job, in prosecuting Trump and his marry little band of followers in attempting to interfere in the Georgia election there is a probability he will be convicted. It is extremely difficult to get around his recorded request of a Georgia election official to find him just one more vote.
Once again, Trump’s lack of self-control or internal discipline required of others will be the source of his downfall. Something his party leadership secretly prays for behind closed doors as they know he will never be able to win a national election.