Tucker is a clown and of course being melodramatic to serve his audience. However, not just the MAGA base is unsteadied - large swaths of the entire institutional GOP are outraged by this trial. Here is an excellent article from a former federal prosecutor from the SDNY, a former colleague of Alvin Bragg who considers him a friend, about how the law was contorted to get Trump:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-but-prosecutors-contorted-the-law.html




-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In a similar vein, even moderate or outright anti-Trump Republicans like senators Susan Collins and Mitt Romney call out this trial as political theater:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4695886-susan-collins-criticizes-new-yorks-prosecution-of-trump/




And Romney, who is surely not a "Trump cultist" by any stretch of the imagination, called the handling of this case "political malpractice" and had the following to say:



Even Romney thinks that this trial was held for political reasons, rather than legal necessity. Your portrayal of the Republican reaction as a cult reeling from being "hit by the nasty truth about their leader" is ridiculous when even his intra-party foe #1 is still supporting the key argument of Trump's legal team.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------



Well, becoming Trump's VP and counting the days until he croaks is the only chance little Marco has of ever becoming president. Opportunistic career politicians are really willing to debase themselves when the ultimate goal is in sight.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 2 2024 01:18pm

Well in terms of the law its pretty clear. The FEC laid out the "irrespective test" for whether expenses are campaign or personal expenditures. Anything that could exist irrespective of a campaign- even if it influences an election- like a haircut, is a personal expense. New York politicians twisted it with a different definition, saying anything that can influence an election is a campaign expense. They used this for decades to cover up rampant bribery and racketeering, allowing democrats to just take bribes willy nilly, in one infamous case having a politician be gifted a car he drives to one campaign event, then keeps. The new standard being used to prosecute people, as it never had been before, would mean anything paid at all with personal funds that could somehow influence a campaign would be a criminal act, like Chuck Schumer buying a bagel at a kosher deli since it could garner him votes from the tribe. They used this inverted standard for the very first time to prosecute someone in Trump, knowing that it sets up a clear catch-22: Either Trump pays hush money as a personal expense and violates state law, or as a campaign expense and violates federal law. He correctly and lawfully paid it as a personal expense, as the FEC directed. Ergo, the charges premised upon this are simply invalid and any procedural crime assuming this as an underlying criminal act have to be thrown out. But they get around this by the simple fact of it not mattering if their charges stick, because prosecutors have the ability to have anyone arrested and tried on any invalid legal theory as long as their is a willing judge, even if it will be thrown out on appeals. Because he'll still be imprisoned as a convicted felon with an appeals process pending before the election.
And of course, this all flies in the face of how Hillary Clinton violated the FEC reporting guidelines by paying for the Steele Dossier using secret funding funneled through Perkins Coie and disguised as "legal expenses" despite going straight to Christopher Steele for opposition research in Russia. For which Hillary Clinton and her campaign were eventually found liable by the FEC, and sentenced to an $8000 fine. Whoopee. And even though a mile of paperwork exists and provably establishes several hundred prosecutable felony counts of falsification of business records by Hillary, in the same jurisdiction they just charged Trump, and with an actual underlying criminal action to cover up, she gets a minor fine and no charges. Similar to Joe Biden having too much dementia to prosecute for possessing classified documents.

literally zero normal people are angry that trump got convicted

This post was edited by Crunkt on Jun 2 2024 04:23pm

Trump is now saying he never said "Lock her up" despite that being a pretty big part of his campaign in 2016. Couldn't imagine why he's suddenly having selective amnesia about it now

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-denies-saying-lock-her-up-clinton-1235031145/

Oh yeah, also he's apparently on Tiktok now. Very weird times

This post was edited by MrSK on Jun 2 2024 08:22pm

Love your sig

If that's your premise, you're living in a country in which almost half the population isn't normal.



In terms of election odds, it must still be noted that the Trump campaign really needed this surge in small donor donations.
The number of swing voters who were open to voting for Trump until now, but are dissuaded by him being labeled a "convicted felon" for THIS ridiculous nothingburger, should be really fucking small. Meanwhile, this trial has further boosted the energy among Trump's base, so I wouldn't even rule it out that this is a small net benefit for Trump's electoral prospects. Still, it's imho more likely that it's net negative... but a really small one.

The biggest downside risk, imho, is that this causes Trump to stray off message and focus too much on his personal grievances, rather than the abysmal policies of the Biden admin. Anyone who is motivated to vote for Trump by the prospect of Trump getting his revenge tour is already a Trump base voter to begin with; he won't expand his coalition by focusing on this stuff.

Is this even substantiated by anything other than the vocal minority? a poll right after the conviction showed 49% of independents thought he should drop out, along with 15% of republicans(with 8% being Trump supporters) on the poll saying the same. I feel like polls haven't been accurate for a couple of years, but that sounds like a pretty big blow

This post was edited by MrSK on Jun 3 2024 12:45pm

Most nominal independents are still partisans and consistently vote for one or the other party, so they aren't actual swing voters. Iirc, over 40% of nominal independents already thought he should drop out even before the verdict. The number of "true" independents is small these days.

Some interesting tidbit I read in recent days:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/what-the-polls-are-saying-after-trumps-conviction.html


This suggest Trump's margin on Biden decreasing by just 2% due to the conviction - and that's an effect which is at its highest point right now, in the immediate aftermath, and will surely fade as time goes on. A polling bump for Biden which even at its peak doesn't rise above the level of statistical noise.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 3 2024 12:57pm

The biggest thing people are going to remember about Trump being a "convicted felon" is the phrase "convicted of what?
As that recency bias wears off, any talking points about it will have to pass the notecard test. What was Trump convicted of? Falsifying documents that show how a porn star was paid for hush money out of his own pocket? That doesn't move the dial one inch from when the stormy daniels story originally broke, which itself didn't change anyone's minds about Trump. They'll just relegate this to "oh its that stormy daniels stuff, old hat".

That's one of the reasons I don't take polling too seriously, along with younger voters not taking part in polls. One of the main reasons why the Red Tsunami of 2022 got blown out of proportion. The Reuters/Ipsos poll paints a harsher light on him post trial, but his conviction is still fairly fresh so the sample size is fairly small






This is giving the average voter a lot more credit than they deserve