Trump Guilty Verdict Open Thread

Literal victory dance headline from Der Spiegel.

Yesterday, a Manhattan jury found former US President Donald J. Trump guilty of 34 felony charges. It is impossible to describe this highly contrived case clearly in a single paragraph, but the upshot is that hush-money paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels violated campaign spending limits, amounted to tax fraud, or constituted an attempt to unlawfully influence the 2016 election – either all of these things at once, or some mixture of them.

The naked political motivations of the prosecution are so obvious that they preempt all possible commentary. In the United States, the establishment have felt it necessary to fortify their free and open democratic elections against unpalatable outcomes by enlisting the help of the judiciary.

Because the German press are complicit in an essentially identical strategy on this side of the pond, they are thrilled – just thrilled – at Trump’s guilty verdict. Their reporting is as voluminous as it is identical, and it’s hard to keep the different think-pieces, op-eds and articles straight. This one from the Süddeutsche Zeitung is useful mainly for hitting all the common themes:

Guilty. Criminal. From now on, these are the official trademarks of Donald J. Trump, at least for now. He is no longer just the first former US president ever to be criminally charged, and in four different cases at that. He is now the first former US president and current presidential candidate to be convicted in criminal proceedings – unanimously, at least in the first instance. Guilty 34 times over.

Trump is a criminal! He is guilty! It feels so good to say that! Guilty guilty guilty!

After such a judgement, a candidate for the most powerful job in the world should be politically finished. Who can imagine a convicted criminal in the White House? What’s more, Trump is theoretically facing three further and far more important trials. Under civil law, he has already had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for sexual abuse, defamation and illegally inflated assets. But this is the USA of the Trump era, so logic hardly matters …

This is a historic case! It’s hugely important! Even though we’re far from confident it will have any meaningful impact on the election which was the whole point of this farce in the first place!

This Trump case … tells us a lot about America 2024. On the one hand, it shows that the American justice system can function excellently if fearless prosecutors make an effort. A New York court has managed to expose the city's most famous son as a fraud in six weeks. For decades, this man had been getting away with all his blatantly mafia-like tricks …

It would have been wiser to prove the serious crimes against Trump first. He allegedly tried to overturn Biden's 2020 election victory and was instrumental in his supporters raiding the Capitol on 6 January 2021. They threatened to hang Vice President Mike Pence, who was loyal to the constitution. There were deaths and injuries. When Trump finally moved to Florida, he also took crates of state secrets with him …

Unfortunately the charges were so tangled and weak that we can’t even provide a clear description of them to our readers! That hardly matters though because Trump is also guilty of all kinds of other things over which the Manhattan prosecutor has no jurisdiction and for which they did not charge him! That’s why this is a triumph for the rule of law!

None of this seems to bother Trump’s base, on the contrary. The Republicans will support him, throwing themselves to the ground before their patron. Established party colleagues call him a victim of left-wing conspiracy, the hard core of his electorate sees it the same way. The United States has long since split apart politically. But because there are two Americas facing off each other and the election is likely to be close, the New York trial could have lasting consequences.

A significant proportion of Americans are more interested in petrol prices than in Trump’s bookkeeping after his escapades in bed. Others are particularly bothered by Biden’s age, immigrants and support for foreign wars. At the same time, undecided compatriots may now realise that an 81-year-old Democrat is much better for the nation than a 77-year-old gangster.

Those crazy American voters! Worried about petty things like petrol prices, Biden’s mental competence, mass migration and foreign wars! It is absolutely not an indictment of progressivoid lunacy that they’d prefer the presidency of a “77-year-old gangster” to that of a frail senile gerontocratic avatar of the establishment!

The process has demoralised Trump; in the courtroom he now and again nodded off. His outburst of anger shows that his return to power would be a vendetta. Conservative commentators see the historic judgement as political and risky. But much more dangerous would be a President Trump who is above the law.

Trump is a bad man and he should feel bad! Now he’s angry and more dangerous than ever, so we must doubleplus hope he doesn’t win! Rule of law rule of law!

All the contradictions are there on the surface, there’s not even the slightest attempt to reconcile them.