...was to make it all go away. He didn't do that. He wanted to delay so he could make it disappear when he was POTUS again. That's not likely to happen.Neither of Smith's cases are going to make it to verdict (if even to trial) before the election.
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) June 14, 2024
The delay tactics worked. The public will be deprived of judicial resolution of these issues prior to casting their votes.
Just as Trump hoped. https://t.co/75W8uTElIR
What is likely to happen is that Trump is not re-elected, and the money he's raised to fight off these cases, evaporates. The most politically aware people on Twitter lament the fact John Q. Public won't know that Trump is a twice, or thrice, or four times convicted felon.
Honestly, for electoral purposes, more than one is overkill.
The vast majority of Amereicans are barely aware Trump had a trial, much less has lost three civil cases and one criminal case in the space of 12 months (is it less? Seems like forever....). The fact he is a convicted felon at all is just now sinking in, and that's, again, now knowledge everyone has. I suspect more will after the first debate. I suspect will more will has the campaign season starts up and people expect to see campaign ads on their favorite TeeVee shows (believe it or not, political Twitter, for most people the campaign hasn't started yet. The two major parties don't even have official candidates, though the fact of that technicality just underlines how unimportant political parties have become. Their vestigial power is ballot access in all 50 states. Beyond that, well...let's just say there's a reason the GOP House majority hasn't followed the lead of any Speaker since at least John Boehner. And the wizard of the Senate, the once powerful and all-Senate rules knowing Mitch, has been reducted to a man no longer even behind a curtain, unable to conjure the light and smoke show that so awed the political press for so long (nothing awes the political press like arcana they don't understand, unless it's the law. And then they are experts because everything they know about courts they learned from TeeVee.). Which is odd, because Mitch's greatest power was when he was in the Senate minority. But since 2020...nothing. The all-powerful Mitch left the building a long time ago; but his narrative left before him.
So would the electoral story of Trump changed if Judge Chutkan ruled over a guilty verdict before November 5, 2024? I seriously doubt it. Few enough people paid attention to the J6 committee hearings (including reporters, who still act like it never happened, and J6 was just a powerful overflow of spontaneous emotions. Any suggestion that it was planned by Trump and others is just treated as campaign rhetoric and talking points from Democrats. The U.S. political press really is as useless as a pitcher of spit.); and some of them were televised. Even with cameras in the courtroom (settled down! Never gonna happen!), proceedings would be during the day, and the reports on the evening news/Twitter videos would all be carefully selected to be either anodyne or preach to a particular choir.
Answering the question: if a trial were held and nobody listened, would it make any difference?
Trump proclaimed, more than once, that his testimony or Cohen's record of lies or something had defeated the forces of the State of New York, only to win a judgement of half-a billion dollars against himself. He said the same, daily, about the criminal trial; and still he lost. He seriously imagines some extra-legal force, be it MAGA or voters or the Speaker of the House, is going to save him from his fate. Being President would only postpone it four years; nothing more. It wouldn't stop the collection efforts of Jean Carroll and New York state, after the appeals are lost (or the money to pay for them runs out).
And now there is Milwaukee and shark-boat-electrocution to make even dullards wonder if Trump can ties his own shoelaces. But another felony conviction on a basis almost no one understands (he didn't rob a bank or commit murder; there's a reason movies and TeeVee shows are almost never about white collar crime)...wait, you think the public will learn more from reports of the testimony than they did from the televised hearings? I have some land in southern Louisiana you'll want to invest in, sight unseen..... As I was saying, another felony conviction is just gilding the lilly at this point. The people who are going to reject Trump because he's a felon, aren't going to need at least one more to make that decision.
And, as I say over and over again (no, not everything I've said so far although, yes, there's a lot of repetition in this, and not the kind SK talked about): campaigns matter. Biden is spending money on offices and ads and GOTV (when the time comes), and Trump is....giving himself $5 million (why does a billionaire need pocket change like that from donations?) while beating the bushes for more money to pay the lawyers (why does a billionaire need donations to pay his lawyers?).
The end is as certain as the future can be (we can be relatively certain the sun will rise on November 6, but things could change). But play the hand you're dealt, and stop lamenting that you didn't draw to an inside straight or trade two cards for a royal flush.🃏
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