So I just read that his conviction and even imprisonment won’t bar him from being president again. The RNC is apparently still behind him and we know his followers won’t be swayed.
So do you think his conviction will have any affect on the race? Are there those in the middle that might be turned off by him now?
How exactly can he be sworn in, promising to carry out his duties?
How will he travel? Parole officers can be real jerks.
But what really bothers me is, this will cement the Maga faction even harder to him.
I just hope enough people stand true, this can’t happen. The world view will be horrible for us.
The verdict itself, no. His meltdown and the violent reaction of the magats, yes.
If he is elected, we will become the laughing stock of the planet, our word will carry no weight and we will not be trusted in anything we say or do. I believe it would signal to the world that our “great experiment” has failed at last, as the loonies have taken over the asylum.
There probably aren’t many people out there who are going around thinking “Well, gee, I wasn’t going to vote for that Trump fellow, but now that he’s been convicted, I reckon maybe I will”.
Most likely there are exponentially more people whose thoughts, and shift of plans, is in the opposite direction. Enough to tank him? Hard to know. Pollsters have cited a significant number of “Trump voters” who said that a conviction would make them less likely to vote for him.
There are those who scream and rant and don’t vote.
Potentially they will give huge amounts of money and get their butt outta bed and actually vote on Nov.5th.
I was just checking out my Betfair account and was stunned to see that Trump is favorite in their market. I would have assumed, in a sane world, that I could bet every penny I have that he won’t win the election now. Apparently not.
He already took the oath once. Nobody believed him then either.
Of course, he did manage to fall short of even those meager expectations. So level-set accordingly.
[Sarcasm ON] President Trump (who won the last election) was convicted by a kangaroo court.
He had no legal representation; was not allowed to speak in his own defence and the jury was hand-picked by Democrats. [Sarcasm OFF]
Kidding aside, on July 11th Trump will be sentenced to something which will likely be probation. If that’s the case then he won’t be able to leave the state without permission from the judge, which may be difficult if not impossible given that Trump’s demonstrations of remorse have been a bit, ah, strained.
This will make it hard for Trump to travel to red states, making it hard to host kind of rallies that whip up ratings and fill his sails. It’ll all need to be done from NY, and it’s all but certain that probation will include prohibitions on attacking the judge or jurors, which could get him yanked back to jail.
Other outcomes:
People with Trump’s personality disorder do not believe they ever do anything wrong, so remorse is not something they do. Since he’s not going to demonstrate any contrition, I expect a prison sentence. Or maybe I’m just being too hopeful.
Anyway, assuming he does get prison time, will he have to go directly from the sentencing hearing or will he be given a reporting date? I expect the latter, but then the question becomes: Will he show up?
I don’t think he will so I think the question becomes: Will the go after him if he doesn’t.
Back when Hillary Clinton was the candidate and Comey did his little “hey, we found some more emails” thing right before the election, I think it’s likely that a lot of people on the fence thought, OK, that’s enough, I can’t deal with this anymore and voted for Trump.
I have to imagine that’s true the other way as well. People on the fence may just throw their hands up and say, “OK, this is too much, it’s an embarrassment for the country. I’m going with the non-felon.”
So, my uneducated guess is that this will firm up his support with his MAGA base but will lose him votes on the margin, hopefully enough to make this election less stressful.
It might or might not affect the election. I suspect it must be at least a small negative? If only because, at some point, serious people will be publically asking questions like “how do a President’s felony convictions affect his ability to conduct international diplomacy? Could he be denied entry to the country hosting a G7 or NATO summit? How would it affect world opinion if he could only attend an international event after the host country gave the USA a special exemption to usual travel rules, in order to allow its criminal president to attend?”
Consider, for example, the amusement value of a UK government reluctantly allowing him entry to the UK for some summit, but the Scottish justice minister ruling that the felon can’t go golfing in Scotland, being over-ruled, and then compromising by having the foreign criminal followed around his own golf course by a Police Scotland (heavily) armed response unit?
Literally everywhere he visited he would be accompanied by angry complaints about the government allowing foreign criminals easy entry to the country. Do you think any of your allies want that, or would do anything to avoid all of the reputational damage falling on the USA? “We have no choice but to cooperate with the Americans, even though they have elected a rotten, corrupt government, headed by a rotten, corrupt criminal.”
America, in November you will be asked formally what you want your country to be. Cast your vote with care. The world is watching.
People who are on the fence about voting for Trump wouldn’t know the G7 from their G-spot, or NATO from Nabisco. We’re taking the dumbest of the dumb.
I’m with those who feel this HAS to be at least a small negative - which will hopefully dissuade some mild Trumpists/semi-sane Repubs and will motivate rational people.
In another thread someone posted (paraphrase) “Impeached twice, fined a half billion dollars, convicted felon.” As I said there, that should serve as a sufficient Biden/Dem campaign slogan. If he is elected nevertheless, our country deserves the worst that might happen.
Seriously Repubs - this guy is the best you can offer? And all the prominent loyalists… Just boggles the mind! The influence this one mediocre grifter has over so many people in high office is truly amazing.
I’ve wavered on this.
The wrongdoing in this particular case is much milder from a legal point of view than the other cases. And not even that comprehensible to the lay person (i.e. me).
So initially I figured this is a win for MAGA; they can use this as evidence for the “trump as victim” narrative, and no one actually cares about the crime itself.
But right now I’m more inclined the other way.
Firstly, because of the whole porn star angle.
I know it shouldn’t matter and that it’s irrelevant to the case really, but there’s a lot of shoulda’s and oughta’s that are broken around Trump; this is one time it’s working in the favor of good.
It’s embarrassing, and Trump can never admit to it, so his apologists just don’t know what to do with it. It’s also a big part of why his defence was a joke.
Which brings me to the second part: there is no defence for this, no alternative description of events. Of course, this is true of all the cases, but this is the one on the table right now.
When I’ve spoken to MAGAts about this case, they usually present no story of what “really” happened at all. The few that try some kind of defence usually can’t answer the question: “So Cohen shouldn’t have got to jail then?”
From what I’ve seen of the MAGA TV pundits, they are exploding with rage at everybody, and not talking any specifics of the case. I’ve got to think that to the average person, who is not tuned into politics or this case, they will just see them as the lunatics they are.
I’m thinking that a lot of the supposed fence sitters are MAGAs that are just avoiding having to argue with friends about the subject. There are no lines that Trump can cross that will cause them to leave him-The Democrats are an actual enemy of the country, not just political adversaries, and they are to be destroyed as a Party. The days of “Things were said during the election, but it is time to move on” are long gone as far as they are concerned.
This is where I am at. My thinking is it needs to be juust enough in several key states, and those states only, to tip the scales in favor of Biden. The rest of the states don’t really matter, thanks to the EC. The margin is that close - even a small number of people who don’t vote or switch to Biden will make all the difference.
This would be especially ironic were he to visit Mexico.
Mexico: They US is sending rapists and felons into our country!