GUILTY. ON. ALL. COUNTS.

Donald J. Trump, Convicted Felon

Richard Nixon “I am not a crook.”

Donald Trump: “I am a very innocent man.”

Let’s pause for a moment before the tsunami of rank punditry overwhelms us. This an extraordinary moment in American history.

Donald J. Trump is a convicted felon. Convicted on all 34 counts.

It’s almost as if gravity exists after all.

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This, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Rule of Law looks like. After a lifetime of lies, frauds, and sedition, Trump has finally been held accountable by a jury of his peers.

Blustering after the verdict, Trump declared that “The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people.” As usual, he’s wrong. This verdict was real; and it was spectacular.

And it sets up the most dangerous stress test our democracy has undergone in more than a century.

To be sure, the New York case was not the most important case he faces; and he is unlikely to see the inside of a prison cell. But the criminal justice system finally caught up with him this afternoon — and he still faces dozens of felony charges in different venues (although they are unlikely to be resolved before the election.)

As a felon he is now disqualified from almost every position of trust in American life; he could not serve on the board of any public corporation; get any security clearance; or apply for almost any job that requires even a modicum of character or trust.

And yet, he is running for President of the United States: this disgraced, twice impeached, defeated former president.

And the Republican Party will crown him as their nominee in just a few weeks. He will be sentenced on July 11, two days before the beginning of the RNC Convention in Milwaukee., Perhaps we should dwell on that for a moment: The party of law and order is about to nominate a convicted felon for the highest office in the land — a mind-bending reminder of the GOP’s transvaluation of values.

But — and this is important — we did not really need this jury to tell us who Trump is. We knew. And we’ve always known, because we are not the crazy ones.

What we saw over the last weeks was more a reminder than a revelation: the trial exposed the miasma of sleaze that hangs over the man like a fetid cloud.

But now comes the dangerous part.

As Molly Jong-Fast notes, Trump’s strategy will be to discredit the entire system of criminal justice. He has already begun.

When Trump calls the justice system “corrupt” and “conflicted,” he undermines one of the central tenets of our rule of law: the right to a fair trial. This explains why Trump effectively attempted to undermine a verdict before it was even passed down. He has sought to damage the institution of our justice system from the start. And he has succeeded in chipping away at its perceived legitimacy, long before any verdict was handed down.   

Trump also knows that he can count on willing allies. Oliver Darcy explains in his newsletter, Reliable Sources:

Throughout the duration of the Manhattan hush-money trial, Fox News and the rest of MAGA Media have set the stage to absolve Trump in the historic case. Day after day, week after week, popular personalities such as Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Steve Bannon have lampooned the judicial system, portraying Trump as an innocent victim of political persecution.

Inside this alternate media universe, the actual facts of the case never penetrate the bubble that shields its audiences from detrimental developments for Trump. Instead, alternate dishonest storylines are disseminated as the gospel truth.

Not only is Trump entirely innocent of any and all wrongdoing in the MAGA Media world, but President Joe Biden is guilty of nefariously weaponizing government to wage “lawfare” on his political opponent. Audiences are told that Biden cannot win a fair fight with Trump, so he has resorted to illegal “election interference” by rigging the judicial system against Trump.

Even before the verdict, the volume and intensity of the attacks was extraordinary.

The progressive Media Matters said in a study published this week that Fox News has leveled at least 200 attacks on Merchan alone since the trial commenced — a staggering number that does not include the attacks on others associated with the case. And the study only accounted for Fox News, not the host of other entities that make up the right-wing media universe.

It can be tempting to ignore the torrent of attacks Trump’s media allies are launching in their unrelenting efforts to undermine the case. But those forces are shaping how a large swath of the country understands the high-stakes and unprecedented trial taking place in lower Manhattan. And they’re a reminder that if Trump were to return to power, he has a powerful propaganda apparatus at his disposal that will do everything in its power to sanitize his actions — whatever they may be.

BONUS:

Will any of this make a difference?

You were warned about the punditry, but it’s unavoidable: How will this affect the presidential race which is, right now, on a razor’s edge. Some quick thoughts:

• No one knows.

• Don’t expect any quick or dramatic shift in the poll numbers.

• Trump’s hard-core base won’t budge. And you’ll read a lot of stories about how angry and fired up they are.

But…

• Swing voters will decide this election.

And…

• A felony conviction is not an asset. Check out these numbers from Gallup: Just 29% said they would vote for a candidate charged with a felony — 23% said they would vote for someone convicted of a felony.

• Cautions are obviously in order. The reality is that many Republican voters will vote for Trump regardless of the conviction. But it’s not unreasonable to think it will move some voters at the margins… which is where the future of American democracy will be decided.

Trump keeps telling us…

Two things are true at the same time:

As David Axelrod wrote earlier today:

What a shame that this is the only case that has actually gone to trial. Not the brazen purloining of highly classified docs. Not the plotting to overturn a free and fair election. However the jury lands, this is the least of the charges against Trump, and least relevant to his fitness to serve.

But NR’s Jim Geraghty is also right:

Nonetheless, this is all about hiding Trump’s tryst with a porn star while Melania was raising four-month-old Barron. Trump is a boor, a creep, a pathological liar, a rage-aholic, a guy who watched television while an angry mob that he ginned up chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” His mind has all the stability of a Jenga Tower made of Jello in the back of a pickup truck with a blown suspension, driving over the San Andreas Fault.

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My latest article at The Atlantic makes the case that Trump continues to tell us exactly who he is:

On Memorial Day, while the nation mourned its honored dead, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to denounce “the Human Scum” who are “working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country.”

In the post, Trump did not mention the fallen soldiers whom, in the past, he has referred to as “suckers” and “losers.” But he did take the occasion to lash out at “the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York” who had described what he did to E. Jean Carroll as “rape,” and the “N.Y. State Wacko Judge [Arthur Engoron] who fined me almost 500 Million Dollars (UNDER APPEAL) for DOING NOTHING WRONG.”

In a separate post the night before, Trump went after the “Radical, highly Conflicted Judge Juan Merchan,” who is presiding over the hush-money criminal trial in which the jury has begun deliberations. Trump also denounced “the Corrupt, Soros backed D.A., Alvin Bragg,” whom he accused of being “controlled by Crooked Joe Biden’s White House.” As I wrote last month, Trump’s broader strategy is to delegitimize the justice system as a whole—and to spread fear within the institutions tasked with holding him accountable.

Trump also took the time in his Memorial Day Truth Social post to resume his attacks on Carroll herself—the woman he has been found liable for sexually abusing, and then defaming, and then defaming again. He already owes her $91 million, but he felt the need, apparently, to once again accuse her of lying about his assault of her.

Amid all of the angry and unhinged rants, Trump’s attack on Carroll was particularly notable because it could prove even more expensive for the former president. Caroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, has previously suggested that Carroll could file a third defamation suit against Trump for his continued comments about her. “We have said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table,” Kaplan said in response to Monday’s post. “And that remains true today—all options are on the table.”

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that Trump is promising donors that he would deport pro-Palestinian protesters. As The Atlantic’s David Graham notes, protest is “an essential element of American freedom and is not itself against the law.” The threat, David writes, “is classic Trump: vindictive, nonsensical, disproportionate, and based on the assumption that deportation is the answer to America’s problems.”

I could list other dangerous and nonsensical recent statements, but I’ll end with this one: Trump’s Memorial Day rant came just a little over 24 hours after he shared a video of a man furiously raving at MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough—and liberals in general. The man declares that Trump will “get rid of all you fucking liberals. You liberals are gone when he fucking wins. You fucking blow-job liberals are done. Uncle Donnie’s gonna take this election—landslide.”

You may have missed this, because much of the media continues to shrug at Trump’s most extreme rhetoric.

The gravity and volume of Trump’s concerning statements, and the ways that they interconnect, are not always reflected back by major media coverage. A November study by Media Matters for America found that major news outlets gave “dramatically less coverage” to Trump’s description of his enemies as “vermin” earlier that month than they devoted to Hillary Clinton’s remark about a “basket of deplorables” in 2016. Among other findings, the Media Matters review notes that the Big Three broadcast-TV networks “provided 18 times more coverage” of Clinton’s comment than of Trump’s.

But attention must be paid.

For the moment, Trump’s fate is in the hands of a New York jury. But ultimately, his fate will be up to the voters, won’t it? Millions of voters seem disengaged from this year’s campaign. A New York Times analysis of recent polling found that Trump’s current lead rests with voters “who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.” Young voters seem especially dismayed about the election and cynical about the stakes.

But Trump continues to tell us who he is and what he intends to do. We’ve been warned, and nobody—including that jury—is coming to save us before November.

Nota Bene

David Frum: Wrong Case, Right Verdict - The Atlantic

Donald Trump will not be held accountable before the 2024 presidential election for his violent attempt to overturn the previous election. He will not be held accountable before the election for absconding with classified government documents and showing them off at his pay-for-access vacation club. He will not be held accountable before the election for his elaborate conspiracy to manipulate state governments to install fake electors. But he is now a convicted felon all the same.

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ICYMI: Ken Burns’s commencement speech at Brandeis:

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, "The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed."

The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, "a bigger delusion", James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies.

Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer….

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And finally, Auggie thinks this is a BFD.