Republican leaders said they were not only unfazed by Trump's felony conviction, but outraged that he was ever charged in the first place.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called it “a shameful day in American history” and said the trial in New York on charges of illegally trying to influence the 2016 election was “purely a political stunt, not a legal one.” As for Trump, Speaker Johnson said in a statement, “He will win!”
Some say Trump is the victim of a justice system that has been “weaponized” against him. He is an innocent man, they say.
In Georgia, Lt. Governor Bert Jones, who declared his state a “law and order state,” called Trump a “political prisoner.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an upside-down American flag on social media, a sign of distress that Justice Alito acknowledged. Rep. Mike Collins said it was time for retaliation. “It's time for Republican State Attorneys General and District Attorneys to get busy,” he wrote on Twitter.
What kind of world do we live in? A former president lost his case in court and was unanimously convicted in the city where he lived his whole life. Was his conduct criminal? The jury surely thought so. He has the right to appeal the verdict, and he intends to do so.
But the former president is also calling on all Republicans to not only abandon the law-and-order principles they claim to believe in, but also to support him as he runs for a third term.
This could be problematic in Georgia, where 64% of voters, including 40% of Republicans, said they would not vote for a political candidate who had been convicted of a felony by a jury in an AJC poll. This also poses a problem for 2024 Georgia Republican candidates, who would have to run with a convicted felon at the top of their ticket.
A presidential candidate who has been impeached twice, insurrectionist, and now convicted of 34 felony offenses would have stood down long ago, if not for the good of his country, then at least for the good of his party. But Trump is no ordinary candidate.
So in addition to dealing with the political problems a conviction would pose, Republicans will also have to contend with other logistical obstacles they have never encountered before, such as the fact that Trump is a convicted felon and therefore cannot vote for himself in November's election unless he is in prison.
Speaking of prison, legal experts say that while Trump could technically hold the presidency from prison, his sentence would likely be suspended to avoid a constitutional risk that would deny the president meetings, briefings and regular outside communications. One such communication would be the classified presidential briefings that Trump would receive daily, but a felony conviction is typically grounds for being denied a security clearance.
The good news for Republicans is that there's still time to rescue Nikki Haley. The Republican convention starts four days after Trump is scheduled to be sentenced in New York. Trump's approval rating was roughly equal to Biden's before his conviction, but every poll this year has shown Haley to handily beat President Joe Biden by double digits.
Not only can Republicans retake the White House, they can avoid the chaos and criminal activity that Trump has brought about.
The bad news for Republicans is that they don't seem to want to be saved: Republican leaders are not only willing but enthusiastically defending Trump publicly, while his most staunch supporters see the conviction as evidence that Trump was right all along that he was the victim of Deep State Democrats.
The only Republican to tell voters that “respect for the rule of law” was former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, who is running for Senate. But he was quickly attacked for lack of loyalty. “You just got done campaigning,” Trump senior adviser Chris LaCivita said on X in response to Hogan's comments.
So the party of law and order is saying that not every conviction matters, and not every jury should be trusted. A Georgia candidate with a criminal conviction may not be big news after all. Maybe one day he'll run for president.
