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MEDIA AND SOCIAL MEDIA REACTION TO TRUMP GUILTY CONVICTION

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Media and social media reaction is pouring on former President Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions in the hush money case, making Trump the first criminally convicted felon. Here’s a cross section of traditional, internet, and social media reaction.
The Los Angeles Times:

NEW YORK — Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes Thursday as a New York jury found him guilty of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

Jurors convicted Trump on all 34 counts after deliberating for 9.5 hours. As the verdict was read, he sat stone-faced in court, looking down.

The verdict is a stunning legal reckoning for Trump and exposes him to potential prison time in the city where his manipulations of the tabloid press helped catapult him from a real estate tycoon to reality television star and ultimately president. As he seeks a return to the White House in this year’s election, the judgment presents voters with another test of their willingness to accept Trump’s boundary-breaking behavior.

….For another candidate in another time, a criminal conviction might doom a presidential run, but Trump’s political career has endured through two impeachments, allegations of sexual abuse, investigations into everything from potential ties to Russia to plotting to overturn an election, and personally salacious storylines including the emergence of a recording in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals.

In addition, the general allegations of the case have been known to voters for years and, while tawdry, are widely seen as less grievous than the allegations he faces in three other cases that charge him with subverting American democracy and mishandling national security secrets.

Even so, the verdict is likely to give President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats space to sharpen arguments that Trump is unfit for office, even as it provides fodder for the presumptive Republican nominee to advance his unsupported claims that he is victimized by a criminal justice system he insists is politically motivated against him.

Axios:

Why it matters: The verdict introduces unprecedented legal and political questions that will have an undeniable impact on the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump’s guilty verdict is also likely to fuel his repeated efforts to paint himself as the victim of politically motivated prosecutors.

Minutes after the verdict, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita wrote on the social media platform X: “The FIX was always in …”

Trump said from the Manhattan courthouse after being convicted that “the real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people.”

“We’ll keep fighting and we’ll fight to the end and we’ll win,” Trump said.

He said in a post on his Truth Social platform shortly after: “This was a disgrace—a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt. We will fight for our constitution—This is long from over!”

State of play: Trump’s legal team is likely to appeal the verdict, a process that is unlikely to conclude before November.

Prosecutors sought to prove to the 12-person jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump intentionally falsified business records to commit or conceal another crime.

Trump was charged last year with 34 felony counts in the first degree of falsifying business records in the first-degree in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels over an alleged sexual encounter.

The jury deliberated for two days after hearing testimony in the case for more than a month.
Zoom in: Trump’s conviction raises unprecedented legal questions as he seeks to win back the White House.

NBC News on the Biden campaign’s reaction:

President Joe Biden’s campaign declared “no one is above the law” in a statement released just minutes after former President Donald Trump was convicted in a New York courtroom.

“Donald Trump has always mistakenly believed he would never face consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement. “But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality.”

At the same time as it reacted to the verdict in New York, the Biden campaign underscored messaging it teased last week: that voters should wake up to the possibilities of another Trump term. That means, the campaign says, getting supporters involved in Democratic campaigns and fundraisers to stop Trump in November — and getting them to stop expecting that Trump will somehow go away because of the myriad trials he faces.

The Atlantic’s David Frum:

The wrong case for the wrong offense just reached the right verdict.

Donald Trump will not be held accountable before the 2024 presidential election for his violent attempt to overturn the previous election. He will not be held accountable before the election for absconding with classified government documents and showing them off at his pay-for-access vacation club. He will not be held accountable before the election for his elaborate conspiracy to manipulate state governments to install fake electors. But he is now a convicted felon all the same.

..It says something dark about the American legal system that it cannot deal promptly and effectively with a coup d’etat. But it says something bright and hopeful that even an ex-president must face justice for ordinary crimes under the laws of the state in which he chose to live and to operate his business.

Over his long career as the most disreputable name in New York real estate, Trump committed many wrongs and frauds. Those wrongs and frauds are beginning to catch up with him, including his sexual assault upon the writer E. Jean Carroll, and then his defamation of her for reporting the assault. Today, the catch-up leaped the barrier from the civil justice system to the criminal justice system.

The verdict should come as a surprise to precisely nobody. Those who protest the verdict most fiercely know better than anyone how justified it is.

And:

We’re seeing here the latest operation of a foundational rule of the Trump era: If you’re a Trump supporter, you will sooner or later be called to jettison any and every principle you ever purported to hold. Republicans in Donald Trump’s adopted state of Florida oppose voting by felons. They used their legislative power to gut a state referendum restoring the voting rights of persons convicted for a crime. But as fiercely as Florida Republicans oppose voting by felons, they feel entirely differently about voting for felons. That’s now apparently fine, provided the felon is Donald Trump.

The progressive Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner:

Hallelujah! A Manhattan jury has found Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to protect his 2016 campaign for the White House.

Each charge is a class “E” felony, with a maximum sentence of four years. But before you get too excited, it’s unlikely that New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan will impose such a penalty. Any jail time Trump receives is likely to be brief. Frustrating as it may be, Trump—a first-time offender—will probably be given a fine, community service, and some form of probation.

But don’t let that stop you from celebrating. Donald Trump is a convicted felon. That seems like something that always should have been true. Now it is.

And:

No matter the outcome in any of his trials, Trump isn’t going to be stopped by a prosecutor, a judge, or a jury. Even if he were convicted of every count against him, he remains a threat to our nation and our system of government. Much as it would be nice to wake up tomorrow and find the threat of Trump lifted without any effort from the rest of us, that’s not going to happen.

He needs to be soundly defeated at the ballot box.

The conservative Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey:

Now that the verdict has come it, Trump’s legal team can finally appeal the entire process in both state and federal courts, although an appeal in New York is the most likely starting point. Needless to say, there are any number of grounds on which this verdict could be appealed. Anticipating this verdict, former federal prosecutor William Otis laid out why he is convinced this verdict will not survive scrutiny on appeal.

……Trump’s sentencing will take place on July 11, but the appeals will be pushed hard before then, along with requests to set aside the verdict altogether. We can expect this to be a hot story nearly every day between then and now.

Meanwhile, what does this do for Trump electorally? We’ll see, but while the trial may not have moved the needle much until now, it’s going to have galvanizing effects that Biden and Democrats may not have anticipated:

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