For the good of his country and his party, Donald Trump must withdraw from the presidential race.
No, I haven’t lost my mind; of course, he won’t. But imagine what would have happened if this were any other moment in American history. A candidate for any public office, including deputy assistant dogcatcher, would have become an ex-candidate before the jury foreman got halfway through the reading of those 34 guilty verdicts. Remember that distant era? The one that began at the founding of the republic, and that ended in 2015 at the foot of a gilded escalator?
It seemed to me that somebody would tell Trump to walk away. After all, chin-stroking pundits and hand-wringing Democrats have been advising President Biden to step aside — for the apparently unforgivable crime of living to 81.
Amid all the caterwauling from Republicans about “lawfare” and their unhinged threats to somehow seek revenge, the reality is this: A jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony offenses after a lengthy trial. Despite what Trump and his histrionic acolytes may say, that decision was not made by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, or by Justice Juan Merchan, or by George Soros, or by Joe Biden.
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The verdict was not some kind of “lifetime achievement award” for Trump’s decades of lying, cheating and stealing. The jury, made up of citizens from Trump’s hometown, heard only evidence that pertained to the alleged crimes — instances of “falsification of business records in the first degree.” It is true that adult-film actress Stormy Daniels was allowed to testify about her sexual encounter with Trump, at which no bookkeeping took place, but only because Trump’s lawyers opened the door to that line of questioning.
What happened in Merchan’s courtroom was hardly “a quintessential show trial,” as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) claimed. In fact, it was the polar opposite. Trump enjoyed the presumption of innocence throughout. The jurors had to agree unanimously on his guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt,” the highest bar for prosecutors to surmount. And Trump surely will exercise his right to appeal the verdict to a higher court.
Everyone should recall that when Bragg took office in 2022, he paused the ongoing investigation into the $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels, which kept the story of her sexual encounter with Trump from hitting the headlines in the days before the 2016 election. Two prosecutors resigned in protest of Bragg’s caution. He decided to seek an indictment only when he was convinced he had a provable case. It turned out that he did.
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Much has been made of how what might have been misdemeanors were made into felonies. But Bragg did not invent that process; it is spelled out in New York state law. If there is something wrong with using legally mandated aggravating factors to convict defendants of serious crimes, there are an awful lot of prison inmates who should be out on the streets. And if Merchan erred in any way, the New York State Court of Appeals can void Trump’s conviction.
There is one thing that I have not heard Trump’s overcaffeinated defenders claim: He didn’t do it.
I haven’t heard one Republican official argue that Trump did not sleep with a p*rn star four months after his wife Melania gave birth to their son Barron; that he did not have Daniels paid to keep quiet about the tryst; that he did not cause his company’s books to be falsified to hide the payment; or that he did not buy Daniels’s silence because he worried her story would hurt his chances of winning the election.
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Rather, the GOP argument is that Trump shouldn’t have been prosecuted or convicted for these actions. So much for the erstwhile party of law and order.
Republicans must need throat lozenges after a weekend yelling “election interference” at the top of their lungs. I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in the handful of instant polls that have attempted to gauge the political impact of Trump’s new status as a felon. The point of the trial was accountability, not electability.
But I do hope that Democrats, independents and non-MAGA conservatives will finally snap out of their funk and realize that the aura of inevitability that Trump has been trying to project is nothing but a smoke-and-mirrors illusion.
He lost in 2020 to Biden, although he’s too insecure to admit it. He lost in court, although the system is designed to give every advantage to the defendant. And it is we, the voters — not any judge or any jurors — who have the power to make sure he loses again in November.
