The 2024 presidential campaign, torn and reshaped by Donald Trump's historic conviction, entered uncharted territory Friday, with attention focused on how its two protagonists navigate the perils. The conviction of the Republican front-runner would be a stunning development in an already unusual presidential election and would have profound implications for the justice system and perhaps American democracy itself.
A New York jury's guilty verdict on Thursday in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial made Donald Trump the first former US president to be convicted of a crime, setting an even more startling precedent if he wins the November 5 presidential election and replaces Joe Biden in the White House.
Trump quickly switched from courtroom mode to campaign mode.
“I am a political prisoner!” he declared Thursday, shortly after being found guilty on all 34 charges.
The Republican politician is scheduled to deliver a public speech from Trump Tower, his iconic New York estate, on Friday.
In addition to the New York incident, he faces three more serious criminal charges for attempting to overturn his loss to Biden in the 2020 presidential election and for concealing classified documents at his Florida home.
But those cases are unlikely to go to trial before the November election.
Even if Judge Juan Merchan is unlikely to sentence Trump to prison, the conviction would not prevent him from continuing his bid for the White House.
The verdict had been scheduled for July 11, just before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is set to receive his party's formal nomination to face Biden in the election.
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“No one is above the law”
The challenge for Biden now is to extract political benefit from Trump's historic conviction while avoiding fueling a belief among Trump's supporters that the prosecution is itself political.
“Today in New York we saw that no one is above the law,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement.
“But today's ruling does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality: The only way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office is through the ballot box.”
The White House has become even more reluctant to get its hands dirty after a former resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was convicted Thursday.
“We respect the rule of law and have no further comment,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel's Office, said in a brief statement.
Biden himself had no comment Thursday.
As president, Biden wants to avoid giving ammunition to Republicans who say he is interfering with the justice system.
Now he will have to decide whether convicting Trump would change the calculation.
Biden has a busy schedule of engagements on Friday, including a meeting with the Belgian prime minister and a celebration for the NFL's Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, and will have frequent opportunities to speak to reporters.
Ruling 'backfires'
For any other candidate, a criminal conviction might have derailed his presidential bid, but Trump's political career has seen him weather two impeachments, sexual abuse allegations, investigations into everything from potential ties to Russia to plots to overturn the election and salacious personally storylines that included the discovery of a recording in which he bragged about grabbing women's genitals.
The overall charges in this case have also been known to voters for years and, while vile, are widely seen as less serious than the charges in three other cases in which he is accused of subverting American democracy and mishandling national security secrets.
A Reuters/Ipsos analysis of polls conducted earlier this year found that 57% of respondents who planned to vote for Trump said they would do so even if he was convicted of a felony. About 13% of his supporters said they would not vote for him in that case, and 29% were unsure.
Robert F. Kennedy, an independent candidate for president, predicted on TV show X that the New York trial would “backfire.”
The Democrats' strategy is to defeat President Trump in the courts, not at the ballot box. This will backfire in November. Worse, it is deeply undemocratic.
America deserves a president who can win votes without compromising government policy…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (@RobertKennedyJr) May 30, 2024
But Keith Gaddy, a political analyst and professor at Texas Christian University, said the political ramifications of the shocking incident are yet to be seen.
“It probably wouldn't move the votes a lot, but it could have a small impact, especially in states with a lot of swing votes. So it could tip things from one side to the other, especially in a close election,” he said.
Trump supporters call for riots and violent retaliation
Supporters of the former president reacted angrily to the verdict, with pro-Trump websites calling for riots, revolution and violent retaliation.
A Reuters investigation found messages on pro-Trump websites, as well as the former president's own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and Gateway Pundit, calling for attacks on jurors, the execution of Judge Marchan or even outright civil war or armed insurrection.
“Someone with nothing to lose in New York needs to take care of Marchand,” wrote one commenter on Patriots.Win. “If he could, he'd face off against an illegal immigrant with a machete,” the poster said, referring to illegal immigrants.
On Gateway Pundit, one poster suggested shooting liberals after the verdict. “It's time to start shooting leftists,” the poster said. “This can't be solved by voting.”
Threats of violence and intimidating rhetoric have surged since Trump lost the 2020 election and falsely claimed the vote was stolen. As he campaigns for a second term in the White House, Trump has baselessly accused the judges and prosecutors in his case of being corrupt agents of the Biden administration trying to block his access to the White House.
Trump continued his online attacks after the verdict. On Truth Social, he called Marchand “highly inconsistent” and criticized the jury instructions as unfair. One commenter fired back by posting a photo of a gallows and noose with the caption “Traitor to the Justice System!!”
Jacob Ware, co-author of “God, Guns and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in America,” said the violent rhetoric used by Trump's supporters was evidence that the former president has a “robust ability to mobilize his radical supporters to action both at the ballot box and with violence.”
“Unless he accepts this process, the extremist response to his legal challenges will be militant,” said Ware, the Council on Foreign Relations researcher.
“It is hard to believe that Reuters, a once-respected news service, would have descended so tarnished as to publish such a manipulative, false, defamatory and patently foolish article out of political malice,” a Truth Social spokesman said.
All three sites ban violent language, and some of the posts were later removed. Representatives for Patriots.Win and Gateway Pundit did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Trump did not respond to an email seeking comment.
(Courtesy of France 24, AFP, Associated Press, Reuters)
