Donald Trump maintained that he would accept home confinement or jail after his historic conviction by a New York jury last week, but that it would be difficult for people to accept it.
“I’m not sure people will accept it,” the Republican presidential candidate told Fox News in an interview that aired Sunday. “I think it would be difficult for people to accept. You know, at a certain point, there is a moment of fracture.”
Trump did not elaborate on what he thought might happen if that situation came to pass. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, four days before Republicans meet to formally choose their presidential candidate who will face Democratic President Joe Biden in the November election.
Asked how Trump’s supporters should act if he were imprisoned, Republican National Committee (RNC) co-chair Lara Trump told CNN: “Well, they are going to do what they have done from the beginning, which is to stay calm and protest at the polls on November 5. There is nothing more than to speak out loud and clear against it.”
Trump used his conviction to step up his fundraising efforts, but has not tried to mobilize his supporters in any other way, in contrast to his comments protesting his 2020 loss to Biden, which were followed by a deadly attack by his supporters on January 6, 2021 at the United States Capitol.
Some Trump supporters hung American flags upside down after the verdict.
The inverted flag has been a symbol of distress or protest in the United States for more than 200 years.
The RNC and Trump’s campaign raised $70 million in the 48 hours after the verdict, Lara Trump said, a figure Reuters could not independently verify.
At least one Democratic lawmaker on Sunday expressed concern that Trump supporters might respond violently to his condemnation.
“His base listens to him. They don’t listen to Lara Trump. And this is another dangerous call for violence,” Democratic Representative Adam Schiff told CNN.
However, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump ally, said any response must be legal.
“We are the party of the rule of law: chaos is not a conservative value. We have to fight back and we will do so with all our arsenal. But we do it within the limits of the rule of law”Johnson stated to ““Fox News Sunday.”
Trump promised to appeal his conviction by the New York jury, which found him guilty of 34 felonies for falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn actress before the 2016 election.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Jasper Ward and Moira Warburton; contribution by Nathan Layne, Spanish editing by Javier López de Lérida, Reuters)
