The witness list has already been reduced. Attorneys are expected to present closing arguments next week. Next, the New York City jury will meet to decide, in the first criminal trial against a former president, whether Donald Trump will be a criminal convicted of a serious crime during this fall’s presidential campaign.
The political impact of one of the most consequential jury deliberations in the nation’s history is by no means predictable.
“Who knows?” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who has long been an outspoken critic of Trump. “The first victim of the politics based on the slogan ‘I’m good, you’re bad’ of our days is institutional credibility. “We no longer live in a political environment that accepts unbiased facts.”
Either way, whether the verdict becomes a political turning point or not, it will mark an important moment in the race.
This case is the only one of the four indictments against Trump that is expected to go to trial and conclude before Election Day, although charges of falsifying financial records in connection with the secret payment to an adult film actress are not are as serious as those who accuse Trump of trying to boycott the peaceful transfer of power in 2020.
It’s virtually a certainty that Trump’s base of supporters is not going to abandon him now. What is less clear is how a guilty verdict would be processed by doubtful voters or some of the traditionally Democratic voting groups (young, black and Hispanic voters) who have recently expressed a lower willingness to support Biden and have even considered backing Biden. Trump.
“We’ve looked at a lot of polls that indicate a sizable portion of the electorate would abandon Trump if he was convicted,” said Jim Margolis, a veteran Democratic strategist and ad producer. “I hope it’s true. But if the past can give us any indication, I don’t think we can count on that happening.”
Trump’s political playbook before the verdict is so threadbare as to be predictable.
The way in which he has faced several investigations, civil trials and two political trials suggests that, if he is acquitted or if the jury does not reach an agreement, he could declare victory over a deep state that, despite being determined to finish him off, he ended up defeated. It also gives an idea of the tactics he will employ, if found guilty, to try to undermine the legitimacy of the process: he will describe it as a partisan farce designed to weaken his candidacy, a message that both he and his allies have not stopped propagating for months. .
In Trumpian terms, based on his previous statements, he will proclaim a “total exoneration” if he is found innocent and will denounce “electoral interference” if he is convicted.
In a statement, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said Trump’s team will “fight and crush Biden’s misleading judgments across the country.”
In general, the Biden campaign has avoided speaking directly about the trial so as not to add fuel to the Republican Party’s inflammatory accusations, for which it has not provided any evidence, about its administration’s responsibility in the New York case. However, his political team, which declined to comment, alluded to the trial last week, as it began selling T-shirts with the slogan “Free on Wednesdays,” the day the trial was suspended, after Biden proposed holding debates.
Trump’s campaign, which thrives on dramatic displays and whose travel schedule has been limited by the trial, is scheduled to hold a huge rally in New York’s Bronx on Thursday.
Alex Castellanos, a veteran Republican strategist, commented that the outcome of the trial that is about to conclude will be a victory for Trump or a defeat for Biden.
“An exoneration will vindicate him,” he said, referring to Trump, “and a guilty verdict will make him a martyr… and religions arise from these types of situations.”
Castellanos explained that Trump is protected against all accusations against him because of his promise to overthrow institutions and institutional norms that many people in the country believe have done him no good.
“He can grab women’s genitals, he can say ‘I like heroes who have not been captured’ in reference to John McCain, and we can think that his end has come, that he will suffer the consequences,” Castellanos explained. “What does history tell us? That it is true that you can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they will not suffer the consequences. Because it’s not about him, it’s about who he wants to stop. The reason he can eat kryptonite is that he was elected to become the hand grenade that will be slipped under the door of the ruling class.”
No one has run a presidential campaign under the shadow of a guilty plea; It is an unprecedented situation. One of the few prominent cases of a politician being placed on a ballot shortly after being convicted of a crime is that of former Senator Ted Stevens, who narrowly lost re-election just days after being convicted. on seven felony charges in 2008. The race was so close that it could not be decided until absentee ballots were counted.
Yet even in the days of this historic trial, 36 percent of voters said they ignored it completely or paid very little attention to it, according to a recent study of battleground states by The New York Times/Siena College. As for independent voters, who constitute a crucial group, they showed even less interest: 45 percent indicated that they did not follow him or hardly paid attention to him.
Margolis, the Democratic strategist, said the missing ingredient is having television cameras in the courtroom.
“There was no live television broadcast; “Nor have any videos of Stormy’s testimony been seen or shot changes showing Trump sleeping,” he commented on Stormy Daniels, the woman whose intimate encounter with Trump, which he has denied, has been at the heart of the secret payment case. “That is a very important reason why this trial has not caused a stir in the United States.”
