Screens display news of former U.S. president Donald Trump's conviction in his hush-money trial in Times Square on May 30, 2024, in New York.Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
In a lifetime of defying convention, expectations, protocol, cultural assumptions and historical trends, Donald Trump found himself Thursday in a new, unwelcome and unprecedented realm as both the 45th president and the first American who held the most revered office in the United States to be handed the label of convicted felon.
The judgment of the jury came in a repeated tone struck, one after another, 34 consecutive times – the sullen eighth notes of the jury’s verdict. Together they comprised a political version of the opening of Aram Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance, a repeated striking of the same “guilty” tone, expressed by seven men and five women rather than by xylophone, timpani and strings, not in a 1942 ballet but in a 2024 drama that shakes the presidential election, stains Mr. Trump’s historical record and has the potential for driving new divisions in a country already riven by them.
It was a series of moments – in a momentous day – that mixed the unexpected with the fully anticipated.
The repetition of nearly three dozen guilty verdicts in the trial over hush money to a porn star was more than the prosecution expected, or could reasonably have hoped to win. The reaction of Mr. Trump was in character, straight out of the libretto that he has employed for decades. He called the trial a “disgrace” and described it as “rigged,” he characterized Judge Juan Merchan as “corrupt,” and he proclaimed himself “a very innocent man.”
Political commentators and American voters may embrace or disagree with those assessments, as they do with everything Mr. Trump says and does. But they cannot contest the validity of one of his concluding remarks as he exited the scene of his own, singular disgrace, one not even shared by Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal: “The real verdict will be Nov. 5 by the people.”
The last time the United States faced a crisis of unity and contention that matches this period might have been in 1850, when the country’s divisions over slavery were beginning to tear the country apart. At that time, then-senator William Seward of New York urged Americans to consult a “higher law” when examining the question of considering fellow human beings to be property. In this case, Mr. Trump is reminding supporters – and warning opponents – that a higher court than the one that convened at 100 Centre St. in Manhattan will determine his destiny.
Though he faces the possibility of a prison sentence, Mr. Trump is essentially correct in that assessment.
The verdict of 12 jurors in a case even Mr. Trump’s most fervent opponents agree was the least significant of the four legal challenges he faces might have scant effect on the autumn general election. Each step of the way, from indictment to the springtime weeks consumed by torrents of sordid, seedy, treacly and unsavoury testimony, the Republican presidential candidate has profited, building political support and, with a daily rat-tat-tat of e-mail appeals to his supporters, rebuilding the campaign treasury that is being drained by legal expenses.
How this verdict will play out is one of the deepest mysteries of an American political year that has been steeped in mysteries. The reaction almost certainly will come in two dimensions.
The first will be Americans’ response to the verdict and to Mr. Trump’s furious reaction to it. Though there is considerable polling data to suggest a conviction of the former president might shake away some of his support, surveys examining voters’ speculative reactions are inherently unreliable; it is just as likely that the verdict will freeze in place most voters’ views of him, with his supporters more closely tied to him (and in accord with his view that he is being tried for his political views and personality rather than his business practices), and his opponents more contemptuous of him as a unrepentant grifter with disreputable personal habits and dangerous political instincts and impulses.
The second dimension will be in how the two campaigns handle the verdict. In his immediate post-verdict appearance, Mr. Trump portrayed himself as a victim of President Joe Biden’s bile and asserted, “I’m fighting for our country, I’m fighting for our Constitution,” though it is unclear how the country’s founding document applies to falsifying records and buying the silence of a blue-movie star and onetime stripper. Mr. Trump will employ this verdict – and the threat of a maximum of 136 years in prison that comes with it – as the ultimate example of political persecution.
How Mr. Biden reacts is less certain, and in some cases a more dangerous question. He jibed Mr. Trump during negotiations for next month’s presidential debate by saying he knew his rival was available on Wednesdays, the day when the New York legal proceeding was not in session. But reminding voters of his rival’s legal jeopardy and his status as a convicted felon without appearing to crow – the 2024 analogue of president George H.W. Bush’s 1989 urging that Americans practice restraint and not gloat over the fall of Soviet Communism – is a delicate balance, a far bigger political challenge for the President than the one faced by Mr. Trump.
All this will be revealed in the next several weeks. The two will meet June 27 for the first presidential debate, two weeks after the deadline for the Trump legal team to file its appeals. Mr. Trump’s sentencing – the next suspenseful moment in this drama – will be July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention. The judicial and political calendars are colliding in a way that breaks precedent – and has the potential of breaking apart the country even further.