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In today's special edition of Hush Money,
Today I thought I would spend a little more time talking about spelling bees.
Just kidding! Can you imagine? All anyone can think about is the conviction of former president and current felon Donald Trump at his hush money trial in New York on Thursday night. This edition is your one-stop destination for reactions from our columnists.
Dana Milbank reported from the scene that after being found “guilty” on all 34 felony counts, the usually-smart Trump seemed at a loss for words. In a 98-second statement, delivered with his “eyes downcast,” Trump barely made five claims that the verdict was fraudulent but said little else.
Perhaps it's because, as Jim Geraghty points out, something significant has changed with this verdict: “Trump's legendary streak of good luck and his Houdini-like ability to escape the consequences of his actions have come to an end.” Let's not forget that Trump only needed the dissent of one juror to get a mistrial. Trump has always been saved by someone.
(“Has Trump lost his Teflon armor?” Alexi McCammond asked in an emergency edition of her newsletter, Prompt 2024, inviting conservative Jason Willick and progressive EJ Dionne to discuss the trial's aftermath.)
Jim likens the situation to the Road Runner finally being caught by Wile E. Coyote. (One might resent the idea that justice is prone to running headfirst into cliffs disguised as tunnels.) But the immutable Looney Tunes adage is that the Road Runner always, always gets away. Jim doesn't think a guilty verdict would hurt Trump in the long run.
Neither, apparently, does the Trump campaign. Campaign officials argue that the guilty verdict won't have much of an impact on a race that's close and likely to remain so. The main takeaway from the jury's verdict is, “Now we can raise $10 million,” one cynical aide told Karen Tumulty.
(Alexandra Petri imagines the fundraising email thus: “A jury of his so-called peers (absurd! He is a peerless man!) dared to judge Donald J. Trump as if he were an ordinary, law-abiding citizen rather than the God and King of America he was and will be!”
Interestingly, Karen reports that President Biden's campaign seems to agree that the race is stalled, with initial statements focused more on what's to come than on the ruling. Karen predicts the next move from a campaign that's been hampered by full-on court coverage for the past six weeks.
As the editorial board points out, the truth is that many of Trump's supporters have long believed the election was decided, and yet “many other Americans didn't need a trial to form an equally firm view that Trump is immoral or worse.”
It's hard to think of a public figure who is more memorable, which is why a new poll finding that a majority of Americans view criminal convictions as less of a shock is, as the commission writes, “the most startling finding of the day,” but also not entirely surprising.
In other worlds, Trump's problems are harder to ignore: Ruth Marcus writes, “If the system worked as it should, voters would have faced the possibility of electing a man convicted of a variety of crimes in three separate indictments.”
Unfortunately, in our world, we have a laid-back Trump-appointed judge who delayed the Mar-a-Lago documents lawsuit, and a lazy Supreme Court that allowed procedural maneuvers to delay the trial on January 6, 2021. Ruth believes both of these cases are more persuasive than the hush money lawsuit.
But she makes clear in her final legal analysis of the hush money trial that the entire case proceeded beyond reproach: “The jury's verdict should be substantially, indeed almost decisively, respected.” Her only concern is that the prosecutors' decision to “squeeze the ugly facts” of the case “within the bounds of the state's false business records statute” makes the verdict vulnerable to appeal.
Of course, another way Trump could overturn the ruling would be to be elected president himself. As Jen Rubin warns, “Trump would then argue that the will of the voters and his own right to seize power supersede state decisions. His compliant Supreme Court majority would likely agree.”
After all, no guilty verdict would keep Trump out of the White House. The ever-influential Eugene Robinson had written separate columns in advance about each of the three possible verdicts the jury could reach (guilty, not guilty, or mistrial), and the conclusions were all the same.
“The justice system was never going to get us out of this mess,” he wrote. “We must do it at the polls in November.”
The Chaser: Are you prepared for a bit of indigestion? Analysing new opinion polls, Ramesh Ponnuru writes that the voters who decide the outcome of elections are the least engaged people. The gulf between the informed and the disengaged is large and widening.
BONUS CHASER: For an even clearer picture of what we're thinking in the aftermath of the trial, listen to Ruth, Dana and Karen on the “Impromptu” podcast, recorded shortly after the verdict.
But here's a refresher: despite our assurances that cicadas are only supposed to come out about once every 17 years, the poor creatures will soon be returning.
If anyone can find something cute in bugs, it's Edith Pritchett. Enjoy her cartoons that show how bugs aren't so different from us.
The battle to hide the cost of the Republicans' next tax cuts is already on, reports Katherine Rampell. Mexico has two women running for president, and Leon Krause hopes the historic election of a first woman will lead the country toward more constructive politics. George Will writes that menthol cigarettes are a health threat and an election-year issue for Biden.
It's a goodbye. It's a haiku. It's… “goodbye.”
I once thought it was gone, but now it's back
With ever-greater offspring
Plus! A Fri-ku! from reader Peter F.:
Have a newsy haiku of your own? Email me with any questions, comments or concerns you may have. My editor, Amanda Katz, will get started next week. In the meantime, have a great weekend!
