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      Lawless and disorderly: Republicans line up behind Trump after conviction

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      A shameful day in American history. A sham show trial. A kangaroo court. A total witch-hunt. Worthy of a banana republic.These were the reactions from senior elected Republicans, who once claimed the mantle of the party of law and order, to the news that Donald Trump had become the first former US president convicted of a crime.It soon became clear that one of America’s two major political parties was determined to undermine faith in the US judicial system with expressions of rage and demands for revenge, creating an alternative view of the US in which Joe Biden is a clear and present danger to US democracy.Experts warned that by sowing distrust in institutions and the rule of law Trump, his supporters and his Republican allies were creating a political tinderbox ahead of November’s presidential election. In the coming months – especially as Trump faces sentencing in June – that sense of dread and fear of political unrest is likely to only increase dramatically.“We’ve entered new political & legal territory as a Nation,” historian Tim Naftali wrote on the social media platform X. “Donald Trump will now force every GOP candidate to trash our judicial system. There will be a chorus of poison likely worse than what we heard before Jan. 6th. Should he win, he’d have a more toxic mandate than in ’17.”On Thursday a jury in New York pronounced Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He will be sentenced on 11 July, four days before the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.While Democrats hailed the verdict as proof that America’s system of checks and balances remains robust, able to hold political leaders to account, the ex-president claimed the trial was “rigged” and a “disgrace”, adding: “The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people.”His campaign fired off a flurry of fundraising appeals. One text message called him a “political prisoner”, even though he has not yet found out whether he will be sentenced to prison and most experts see it as highly unlikely. The campaign also began selling black “Make America Great Again” caps to reflect a “dark day in history”.Trump campaign aides reported an immediate rush of contributions so intense that WinRed, a platform the campaign uses for fundraising, crashed.Republicans rallied around Trump with both uniformity and ferocity, seeking to cast the justice system as biased and broken. Mike Johnson, who as speaker of the House of Representatives is the third most senior elected official in the country, called the trial a “purely political exercise, not a legal one”, and accused Joe Biden’s administration of participating in “the weaponisation of our justice system”.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said: “Absolute injustice. This erodes our justice system. Hear me clearly: you cannot silence the American people.” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina implied that Trump’s conviction set a dangerous precedent of prosecuting former presidents: “Two can play this game.” Alongside a fundraising link, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida posted on X: “Don’t just get angry about this travesty, get even!”The hyperpartisan response illuminated a very different America from the 1970s when the supreme court ruled that President Richard Nixon must hand over tapes of Oval Office conversations that ultimately led to his resignation; Nixon complied rather than complaining of a kangaroo court or seeking to undermine the system.But in 2024 America is on a collision course between partisan politics and the rule of law. Analysts warned that the Republican backlash could tear at the social fabric in an already volatile election year.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “That is the bigger crime here in the long term. The Republican party has now facilitated the continued onslaught against our democratic institutions.“The long-term consequences of the idea that our justice system or the rule of law is somehow corrupted because Donald Trump says so are immeasurable. We’re seeing that now where even in a court of law where the evidence is clear it’s not good enough. It’s the world turned upside down and the Republican party has enabled it.”Just as Trump has told his supporters “I am your retribution”, so his allies in rightwing media, who have spent months conditioning their audience to distrust the court’s verdict, deployed the language of vengeance. Some argued that, if Trump regains power, he should go after Democrats, prosecutors and journalists.Setmayer added: “If you look on social media platforms and the rightwing ecosystem, the reaction to the verdict was one of hysteria and threats against anyone who was in support of the verdict, particularly in the media. ‘Add them to the list. Buy guns and ammo. Get ready, gear up.’“The language is mobilising and violent and that is something that we should all be concerned about. Many of us who’ve been paying attention have warned about this. This is part of Trumpism. The violence and the retribution is the point and he’s laying the foundation for his followers to rationalise a violent response.”No presumptive party nominee has ever faced a felony conviction or the prospect of prison time, and Trump is expected to keep his legal troubles central to his campaign. He has long argued without evidence that the four indictments against him were orchestrated by Biden to try to keep him out of the White House.In the next two months Trump is set to have his first debate with Biden, announce a running mate and formally accept his party’s nomination at the Republican national convention. On 11 July he could face penalties ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison. Both he and his political allies seem sure to continue exploiting America’s political polarisation and alternate realities.After Republicans gained narrow control of the House last year they set up a panel, chaired by the Trump loyalist Jim Jordan, to investigate “the weaponization of the federal government” and examine what they allege is the politicisation of the justice department and FBI against conservatives. Some have called for the impeachment of the attorney general, Merrick Garland.Nicole Wallace, a former communications chief for President George W Bush, said on the MSNBC network: “I think what is important is for us not to look away from what is broken. And what is broken is that one of the two parties does not respect the rule of law, not because they didn’t like what they saw, not because they saw something different in Judge Juan Merchan than we saw, but because they don’t like the result. And that is a flashing red light for our country.”Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added in a phone interview: “The process of delegitimising our institutions is very far advanced and here you don’t have to speculate. All you need to do is look at the surveys of trust in institutions and just about everything is at rock bottom.“Certainly the judiciary, for various reasons, is no exception. As the judiciary has gotten pulled into what many people see as partisan battles, trust has declined on both sides of the aisle. But the uniform Republican response to the outcome of this trial, which is likely to be sustained over many months, will have even more pernicious effects.” More

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      Trump’s verdict speech fact-checked: what he said and whether it’s true

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      Donald Trump delivered a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories from the atrium of Trump Tower, a day after the former president was convicted of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush-money criminal trial.Here is a fact check of some of the things he said on Friday – and why they weren’t true.Trump claims the Joe Biden White House was behind his prosecutionDonald Trump claimed that the judge presiding over his hush-money case, Juan Merchan, and the court was in “total conjunction with the White House and the DoJ [Department of Justice]”. There is no evidence whatsoever supporting this claim.“This is all done by Biden and his people,” the former president said during a speech on Friday at Trump Tower.The accusation that Biden was behind the prosecution does not line up with the case’s facts.The elected district attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, brought the case against Trump. Bragg is a state official who does not report to the federal government.Biden does not have any authority over Bragg or his office – and there is no evidence that the Biden administration had anything to do with the case.Trump rails against ‘nasty gag order’ he claims no one else has facedTrump claimed he is under a “nasty gag order, which nobody has ever been under”. He also said he has had to pay thousands of dollars in penalties – and that he was threatened with jail.Under Judge Merchan’s order designed to protect trial participants from Trump’s abuse, the former president is barred from making – or directing others to make – public statements about witnesses concerning their roles in the investigation and at trial. It also covers prosecutors, other staffers of Bragg, and members of the court staff. However, Trump is allowed to say whatever he wants about Merchan and Bragg.Trump has been fined $10,000 for 10 violations of the gag order for posts on his Truth Social platform and campaign website. Merchan has warned Trump that he would “impose an incarceratory punishment” for “continued willful violations” of the order.Trump claims he wasn’t allowed to testifyTrump claimed that he wanted to testify “but the theory is that you don’t testify because … they’ll get you on something you said slightly wrong, and then they sue you for perjury”.Trump has previously railed about being silenced and falsely claimed he was not allowed to testify at the trial. But ultimately he made the personal choice to not take the stand in his own defense.Merchan earlier this month addressed the ex-president’s claims, saying: “I want to stress, Mr Trump, that you have an absolute right to testify at trial.” Merchan added that the gag order preventing Trump from verbally attacking witnesses did not affect his right to take the stand.Trump claims prosecutors were not allowed to look into alleged federal campaign violationsTrump claimed that prosecutors who charged him were not allowed to look into alleged federal campaign finance violations.In fact, Manhattan prosecutors did not charge him with federal violations but instead listed the allegations as one of three “unlawful acts” that jurors were asked to consider.Prosecutors said the other crime for which Trump was charged was a violation of a state election law barring conspiracies to promote or prevent an election by unlawful means.Trump claims he faces 187-year prison sentenceDonald Trump claimed the crime for which he was convicted meant that “I’m supposed to go to jail for 187 years”.The former president was found guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree in furtherance of another crime, a class E felony in New York. That is the least serious category and is punishable by up to four years in prison.But as a first-time, non-violent offender, it is unlikely that Trump will face a long sentence. Experts say he is unlikely to receive prison time at all.Trump claims polling shows him ahead after convictionTrump claimed that a Daily Mail poll taken after his guilty verdict showed that he was “up by six points”.The poll he was referring to was an online survey of 400 likely voters that measured his favorability ratings – and not voting intention.Of those who said the 34 guilty counts had changed their view of Trump, 22% said they had a more favorable rating compared with 16% who said they viewed him more negatively.In contrast, a YouGov poll showed that 27% of voters said the conviction made them less likely to vote for Trump, compared with 26% who said they were more likely to vote for him and 39% who said the verdict “makes no difference” in how they’ll vote.Trump claims defense wasn’t allowed to use its election expertTrump claimed that the judge did not allow his defense team “to use our election expert under any circumstances”.Merchan did not bar the defense’s campaign finance expert, Bradley A Smith, from testifying in the trial. Smith was permitted to testify.Instead, Trump’s lawyers decided not to call on Smith after Merchan declined to broaden the scope of questioning the defense could pursue. More

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      Biden hits back at Trump’s ‘dangerous’ claim hush-money trial was rigged

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      Joe Biden warned on Friday that it was reckless and “dangerous” for anyone to claim Donald Trump’s criminal conviction was the result of a rigged trial, as the former president hit out at the verdict against him and Republicans maligned the integrity of America’s justice system.Donald Trump hit out furiously on Friday morning at the new status of “felon” conferred on him by a New York jury, whose guilty verdict made him the first former US president ever to become a convicted criminal.On Friday afternoon, Biden began a White House talk about the war in Gaza with remarks on criticism from Trump and the right wing about the historic trial that had concluded in New York the day before.The US president said: “It is reckless, it is dangerous, it is irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged, just because they don’t like the verdict. The US justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and is literally a cornerstone of America.”He added that the system and the justice it produced should be respected.“And we should never allow anyone to tear it down, simple as that, that’s America,” Biden said.The war of words came a day after Trump was found guilty of all 34 charges he had faced. On Friday morning, the ex-president painted himself as a victim of injustice in a rambling and often incoherent appearance at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, at which he labelled his opponents “fascists” and blamed his legal plight on Joe Biden.Trump was unanimously convicted by a jury of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.Speaking at Trump Tower in Manhattan to cheers from his supporters, Trump set the tone immediately by declaring himself innocent and revisiting populist election-campaign warnings.He said: “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”The event had been billed as a press conference, but Trump took no questions.Instead, he lapsed into a 30-odd-minute monologue that hammered on familiar, inflammatory themes. He criticized the trial and peppered the speech with falsehoods and conspiracy theories that threatened bad things to come if he were not returned to the White House this November, including anti-immigrant rhetoric.Meanwhile, his legal team had already embarked on a counter-offensive to the criminal conviction, aimed at overturning Thursday’s verdict.With the 2024 presidential election campaign propelled deep into uncharted territory, Todd Blanche, Trump’s attorney, went on national television to make a spirited though measured defense of his client, vowing to lodge an appeal.The jury found that Trump falsified documents related to hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, shortly before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her story that she slept with him earlier in his marriage to Melania Trump.Appearing on NBC, Blanche insisted Trump’s defense had not been given “a fair shake” during the trial.“We’re going to appeal and we’re going to win on appeal,” Blanche told NBC Today’s Savannah Guthrie. “That’s the goal. The goal is … to appeal quickly and hopefully be vindicated quickly.”Trump now faces the prospect of rewriting the record books further, if he were to be sent to jail when the judge, Juan Merchan, sentences him on 11 July, four days before the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where Trump is scheduled to be officially anointed as the party’s presidential nominee for this November’s election.Some analysts predict that the prospect of a custodial sentence has risen because of Trump’s repeated breaking of gag orders during the six-week trial and his condemnation of Merchant as “corrupt and conflicted” after Thursday’s verdict.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Blanche played down that possibility, pointing to Trump’s advanced age and his previous lack of a criminal record.The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who led the case against Trump and also was attacked by the former president, has yet to announce whether he will request a prison sentence.Trump pointedly linked his prosecution and the verdict with Biden, whom he labelled “the Manchurian candidate” and “the worst president in our history”, as well as “stupid” and “dishonest”.“They are in total conjunction with the White House, the DoJ, just so you understand, this is all done by Biden and his people,” he said, referring to the legal team that led the prosecution and presumably Merchan, whom he called – among other things – “a tyrant”.The president’s re-election campaign team had commented on Thursday. Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign communications director, said: “No one is above the law. Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain.”Trump and his campaign said that since the verdictthey have raised more than $30m.Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Trump’s false accusations that the case was orchestrated by Biden raised the spectre of further political violence at a time when supreme court rulings are awaited on the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob trying to reverse the last presidential election result.“The real concern here is not that Trump would be able to stir up his base and get loads more votes, because there aren’t loads more votes to get,” he said. “The real question is will Trump continue to feed this sense of persecution, making phony charges that Biden’s orchestrating all this.“That’s not the way our system works. But he has ruined public confidence in our election system, and he’s now ruining public confidence in our judicial system. The man is the worst thing that has happened to American democracy in my lifetime.”Trump trial coverage: read more
      Trump found guilty of hush-money plot to influence election
      Could Trump go to prison and can he still run for president?
      What is Biden’s next move?
      With conviction, good fortune runs out for ‘Teflon Don’ More

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      Angry Trump revisits escalator where it all began – but this time as a felon

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      Approximately six minutes after 11am on Friday, Donald Trump entered the atrium of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York City, wearing a scarlet tie. Behind the former US president, now a felon, stood the same escalator he used in 2015 to announce his presidential bid, triggering eight years of political chaos.In a long-winded address in front of five American flags, golden walls and no teleprompters, Trump spoke for more than half an hour, kicking off his first public event following his guilty verdict in his hush-money criminal trial.It was a rambling, incoherent speech laden with falsehoods and conspiracy theories – trademark Trump, in fact. But it also carried a foreboding threat, aimed at riling his already furious base and reinforcing his own deep sense of victimhood.“This is a case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” he said before launching into a tirade against immigration. “They’re coming in from all over the world into our country, and we have a president and a group of fascists that don’t want to do anything about it.”Trump, making frequent hand gestures as he addressed a crowd of smiling Trump Tower employees, aides, reporters and his son Eric, went on to attack Joe Biden, baselessly saying that his fraud conviction had been “all done by Biden and his people”.“I don’t know if Biden knows too much about it, because I don’t know if he knows about anything, but he’s nevertheless the president, so we have to use his name, and this is done by Washington, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it,” he said.As Trump spoke, crowds of supporters gathered outside Trump Tower, which was heavily cordoned off by metal barricades and dozens of police officers. Loud cheers and honks could be heard from inside the building.“The level of support has been incredible,” Trump said before falsely claiming once again that his trial had been “rigged”, adding that he is under a “nasty gag order which nobody has ever been under”.In fact, in efforts to protect trial participants from Trump’s public attacks, judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing the case, prohibited Trump from making public statements about witnesses, prosecutors and staff members of the court and district attorney’s office.The former president, who has been convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records, maintained his innocence. “I paid a lawyer, totally legal. I paid a lawyer a legal expense,” he said, referring to his former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen, who helped facilitate the expenses to adult film star Stormy Daniels with whom Trump allegedly had a sexual affair.Calling himself “literally crucified”, Trump vowed to appeal the “scam” conviction, saying: “We’re going to be appealing it on many different things.”At one point, Trump made an elaborate claim, saying that his guilty verdict – a class E felony in New York, which is the least serious category and punishable by up to four years of jail time – is supposed to make him “go to jail for 187 years”.Trump went on to frame himself as a self-sacrificing martyr on a mission to save American democracy – an image in stark contrast with the many observers both home and abroad who see Trump as the real danger to US civic society.“It’s my honor to be doing this, it really is. It’s a very unpleasant thing, to be honest, but it’s a great, great honor. We are going to do what I have to do,” Trump said, adding vehemently: “I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to save our country and to save our constitution … We will continue the fight. We’re going to make America great again.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNaturally, Trump’s speech was also a campaign rally for a race in which he is still neck and neck with Biden – though what impact his new felon status will have on the race remains to be seen. “Remember, November 5 is the most important day in the history of our country,” Trump said at the end of his remarks.As he walked away from the podium, the onlooking crowd of Trump Tower employees broke into applause as reporters clamored for questions, which he left unanswered.Outside, crowds of supporters continued to gather across the street, many wearing red Maga hats and craning their necks in hopes of getting a view of the former president inside his 58-story skyscraper.One supporter waved a large flag, billowing in the wind with a print of Trump’s mugshot from his Georgia election-interference case and the words “Trump or death”. Another held a sign that read “Trump 2024. Save America again!”Across the street stood counter-protesters holding signs that read: “Tick tock, time’s up!” Others held signs saying “guilty” and “loser” in big, bold letters. In unison, the counter-protesters chanted: “No one is above the law! Trump is not above the law!”Behind them, someone waved a sign that read: “Caution: felon at large.” More

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      Trump is guilty on all counts. So what happens next? – podcast

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      Today, we are sharing Politics Weekly America’s latest episode with Today in Focus listeners. Donald Trump has made history again, becoming the first US president, sitting or former, to be a convicted criminal. Late on Thursday a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Within minutes of leaving the courtroom, Trump said he would appeal. On a historic night for American politics, Jonathan Freedland and Sam Levine look at what the verdict will mean – for Trump himself, and for the election in November. Archive: CNN, CBS, MSNBC, ITV, NBC More

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      So Trump moves closer to jail and nearer to the White House. This is our world in 2024 | Marina Hyde

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      No rest for political cartographers. It turns out that what lay beyond America’s uncharted waters was some more uncharted waters. The unanimous verdict in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial found the former president guilty, making him the first US president to be convicted of a crime. Forgive me: 34 crimes. A potential bar to security clearance, voting and owning a gun – but not, apparently, a bar to running for president. “I am a political prisoner,” ran an instant campaign fundraising message from Trump, probably typed on the same gold toilet he once pretty much ran the world off.And might well again. Previous polls have indicated some Trump voters would switch in the event of a guilty verdict, but this morning the betting markets had Trump’s chances above 50% for the first time. On the other hand, if criminal trial verdicts going the wrong way for you is such great news, how come Trump is trying so hard to stall the other three cases he’s facing? By way of a reminder, those involve mishandling classified documents, trying to change the outcome of the election, and fomenting the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. He’s already been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in another trial last year, and impeached twice. Take in his thousands of business-related court cases and he’s a one-man law degree.That the import of Trump’s conviction is even debated highlights the extraordinary loss of ideals we have lived through in a single decade. It is simply impossible to imagine a world where, even 10 years ago, any president being convicted of 34 crimes would be regarded – including by many of his detractors – as quite possibly good for his electoral prospects.The ability to make people believe the opposite of the things they see with their own eyes is not a new political trick, and even the version that defines this looking-glass era was perfected by Vladimir Putin long before Trump ever produced his own knock-off model. Perhaps Trump’s most original achievement is to harness conspiracism, one of the great currents of the age, in his favour. I will never get over the vast irony of the fact that conspiracy theorists love this guy – when he embodies and proves so many of their worst fears. He ran, and may run again, a government that lied to them. He was head of a state that disappeared key documents, evidently into some of his own bathrooms. Every day he pulls a political false-flag attack of one kind or another. He was, and is, involved in any number of conspiracies. He really was out to get them. Yet their paranoia bell doesn’t go off.So free-speech nuts decline to see that this is a case in which Trump clearly sought to suppress free speech and consequently democracy. This is what authoritarians do. They decide what the “truth” is going to be, and they manipulate events into making it so. Dissent is silenced. The people are judged too worthless and troublesome to be allowed to make up their own minds (all populists actually hate their people, even as they tell them they are just like one of them). Ideals we might consider the cornerstone of a democracy – free speech, the rule of law – are regarded as things that need to be got around, subverted and ultimately crushed. Democracy, really, is the enemy. Control is the goal.And if you’re good enough at it, as Trump and Putin surely are, your former critics become your fawning court, to the point that no one can even imagine your successor, certainly unless you anoint him (and it will be a him). To watch previous Republican scourges of Trump such as JD Vance or Marco Rubio fawning around him is to imagine a mirror of events that played out inside the Kremlin many years ago. And, indeed, during a succession of earlier Russian presidencies. Even Nikki Haley has recently folded and says she’ll vote for him, and she didn’t even need to be tacitly threatened with nerve-agent poisoning to do it. A bunch of Wall Street big hitters have come around – maybe Trump will gift them some mining concessions or an oil company, like proper little oligarchs.Right after the verdict, his ghastly strongman son Donald Jr popped up to declare, again, that America was turning “into a third-world shithole”. To which the reaction of many oversea observers will have been: you said it, mate. Good of you to be so open, at least.Naturally, I am not being entirely serious. But for many around the globe, the former US president has become like the country’s gun laws – a situation of such glaringly objective negativity that they honestly don’t need some angry native to explain to them how actually it’s all an aspirational local custom that they, an outsider, could never understand. Most people feel they understand it pretty well. No country is immune from making itself a joke – certainly we Brits have had a few really determined goes at it down the years – and the US is currently the world’s leading exporter of mirthless laughs.Even those die in the throat when you consider that far from having been always there, full American democracy is less than 60 years old. And if its betting markets think that a former president being convicted of multiple crimes is a boost to his prospects, then the world must be drawn to the conclusion that it is currently very sick, and quite possibly without health insurance. You can only wish it well.
      Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist More

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      At long last, ‘Teflon Don’ Trump couldn’t unstick himself from the legal system | Margaret Sullivan

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      For decades, he skated. Nothing seemed to stick to the Teflon-coated businessman-turned-president. The guy who didn’t pay his bills, who constantly lied, who mocked a disabled journalist, who insulted a Gold Star family, who bragged about grabbing women by their private parts, who praised dictators, who urged a violent mob to overturn an election, who was unperturbed as his own vice-president was threatened with hanging.Yes, he skated – through two impeachments, through countless investigations and accusations, and through so much chaos that responsible US citizens became almost numb and hopeless.And then came Thursday afternoon, when 12 regular New Yorkers – against the odds and against the conventional wisdom – simply did their civic duty and convicted Donald Trump.Unanimously. On all counts. And quickly. No hung jury, no hesitation – their deliberations lasted not weeks, but mere hours – and no mixed decisions.It took the US jury system to finally bring some accountability, with quite a bit of help from an adult film actor, a sleazy tabloid executive, and the ex-president’s former fixer, a notorious liar himself.In a world so divided that our political tribes can’t seem to agree on a single fact, we now have one that is impossible to argue with: Trump is a convicted felon, the first US president to be convicted of a crime – the crime of falsifying documents to cover up a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 election, lest she tell her tale of their tryst.That much we know. That much can’t be denied, no matter the bitter whining on Fox News or the inevitable claims of a unfair legal system and a corrupt judge.And to those millions who have watched his destructive and sordid career for years, the jury’s decision in a New York courtroom brought a moment both regrettable and righteous.Regrettable, of course, because it’s all so sordid and shameful that this con man was able to operate with impunity.And righteous because somehow the truth won out in this lower Manhattan courtroom and because – quite simply – Trump deserves it.What we don’t know is if it will matter to his bid for the presidency in November.If you believe public opinion polls – it’s wise to be skeptical – it probably will make a difference. Not to his most loyal followers, of course, who have been taught to believe only him. These are the followers who, Trump himself famously said, wouldn’t change their votes if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue.But to some number of reasonable Americans, it will matter. They will decide that they’d rather not put a convicted felon back in the White House, where he never belonged to begin with.A new Marist poll released this week estimated that two-thirds of voters said a felony conviction wouldn’t change their minds. But 17% of the respondents (presumably representing millions of Americans) allowed that they would be less likely to vote for a convicted Trump.The rightwing media, of course, will do what it can to save him. It’s already working on the case. In the initial hour or so after the verdict, the pundit and former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, visibly indignant, told the Fox News faithful that “this is warfare,” and “God help America after what I’ve seen in the last two weeks.”And Trump predictably blasted the trial as “rigged” and “disgraceful”, having said just on Wednesday that even the sainted Mother Teresa couldn’t have survived its horrors.But two facts remain. Trump is now a convicted felon. And there is – after his endless and appalling parade of malfeasance – some semblance of justice.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More