The Trump trials — after another loss, what’s next?

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/06/2024 (495 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What now?

On Thursday, former U.S. president Donald Trump was convicted, after a jury trial, of 34 criminal counts involving payments before the 2016 election to stop a former adult movie actress from revealing the details of her sexual contact with the then-presidential candidate.

This, of course, comes after a civil jury trial that found that Trump defamed a woman after sexually assaulting her, and a further civil trial that found the Trump business empire fraudulently inflated the value of assets to secure loans from banks. Trump is currently on the hook for over US$443 million in fines and court-ordered payments as a result of those civil trials.

And the United States Supreme Court still hasn’t issued a verdict in a case where one of Trump’s lawyers actually argued there were situations where a sitting president could be immune from legal prosecution for ordering the assassination of his political rivals.

It’s hard to imagine what someone would have to do to disqualify themselves from being a candidate for president of the United States.

The latest court verdicts are by far the most serious — but Trump still faces even more serious criminal charges in other courts.

What does that mean, and what should happen now? Some might argue it should mean that Trump isn’t qualified to run.

Don’t take our word for it — take Donald Trump’s word for it.

Here he is, speaking at a rally in November of 2016, and talking about Hillary Clinton: “She shouldn’t be allowed to run … If she wins, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt.”

But, of course, what’s fair for the goose in U.S. politics has absolutely no connection to the gander.

Instead, there are claims that Trump did no wrong, and that the entire U.S. judicial system — and the 12 jurors that Trump’s lawyer said Trump took an active role in selecting — are massively corrupt.

There have been suggestions that the 12-person jury wasn’t made up of “real Americans”, because they were from New York. Trump’s lawyer has made the same argument — that Trump couldn’t get a fair trial with any jury from Manhattan.

The endlessly shifting ground is exhausting. It’s also dangerous.

On some social media channels, there have been calls for insurrection, and for the summary execution of both Judge Juan Merchan and the members of the jury.

How, exactly, are we supposed to look at social media postings like this one, from a founder of a prominent right wing outlet: “If you’re a Republican running for office, you can just go ahead and throw away all of your elegant little policy proposals for this or that corporate exclusion or tax subsidy. Give me a list of which Democrat officials you’re going to put in prison, or get lost.”

You can’t help but think that these are dangerous times.

The best advice?

Everyone should take their foot off the accelerator, and allow the judicial process to play itself out.

Will a suggestion like that in an editorial in a Winnipeg newspaper make any difference whatsoever to the direction taken by our nearest neighbour? Almost certainly not.

But plenty of us vacation in the U.S., visit there, shop there, and have friends there, so it’s legitimate for us to be concerned.

You can be forgiven for making the argument that everything simply looks too far gone: at this point, American politicians and some news outlets have decided that their futures depend on who they pander to, and how they will tell different factions of Americans exactly what they want to hear, and what they want to believe.

So.

What’s next?