When the news of Trump’s verdict came on the car radio, I almost had to stop. My thought was, “This is Fort Sumter.” » Just like when the South decided to bombard a fort held by the North in 1861, this seemed to be the first shot fired without turning back in an inevitable civil war.
Why was I so shocked? We knew this was coming for weeks and Donald J. Trump’s trials barely moved the polls. But the American public has consistently said that a conviction is important because it changes the nature of the election.
Two horrible things can be true at once. Trump governed intemperately, lost the 2020 election, refused to concede, and, at the very least, inspired an insurrection on January 6, 2021.
But it is also accurate to say that he was the target of a plot to deny him office. The Democrats had every chance of nominating a competent alternative in 2020. Instead, they chose Joe Biden, a zombie whom they failed to convince to step down in 2024. Far from unifying the country, he put Trump back in the running.
Unsure whether they could beat him at the ballot box, Democrats turned to the courts, attacking every conceivable aspect of his career — from sex to business to his mishandling of White House red tape — in several states. The strategy was absurd. It’s usually reserved for gangsters like Al Capone.
So no, I was not psychologically prepared for a conviction in New York because the case should never have been brought; falsification of business records should not have been linked to electoral influence; and Stormy Daniels should never have given unrelated testimony.
It all seemed so absurd. Legal experts now say it is very unlikely that the sentence, which will be handed down on July 11, will include prison time – but if prison is possible, I would bet on it happening. It is clear that the purpose of this exercise is not to prove the trite assertion that no one is above the law. This is about preventing Trump from serving another full term.
His campaign will not end; he could end up running for president while not being able to vote. Trump has pledged to appeal: if he makes it to the White House, he will not be able to pardon himself because it is a state matter, not a federal matter. At this point, Ms. Daniels will be the least of his problems anyway. Three new criminal trials will likely have started. Trump hopes the Supreme Court will excuse him; his powers of presidential self-pardon will be tested in others.
Regardless, given how easy it was to convict him in New York on such stupid charges, we can expect him to face continued and aggressive legal risks.
In short, the November election is crystallized in people’s minds not as a question of jobs or war, but as a referendum on whether or not Trump should be in prison. Whatever the outcome, America will lose. Either he gets a president with a criminal record, which would be a national humiliation, or Trump is defeated, calls fraud, serves time and there is violence from his supporters. Those who think that we can restore normality by locking it up are wrong.
There has already been a riot on January 6, which recalled the worst of the 1960s or the racist Red Summer of 1919. Four presidents have already been assassinated. White supremacists blew up buildings and shot schoolchildren.
In comparing 2024 to the Civil War of 1861-1865, I risk not only hyperbole but also sacrilege, because the great cause of the abolition of slavery is absent – and the conflict is harder to define than Confederate vs. Union. But it’s rural versus urban, blue-collar versus educated, Christian versus secular, with issues—like abortion or immigration—that determine identity and defy compromise. The two parts of the nation hate each other.
Blame Trump for that, fine. But Democrats upped the ante by calling him a would-be dictator, implying that a second term would mark the end of the republic. And by now calling him a criminal, they have completely exonerated him.
Why he arouses this particular hatred escapes me. The deadliest thing a president can do is go to war, but Trump has avoided it — while George W. Bush has declared two, killed millions, and is apparently the acceptable face of the Party republican. Reality is less important than perception. Trump’s people attack Biden as a failure of the far left, but he is copying Trump’s border policies and the economy is doing well.
An irrationality is entering Western politics. A recent Alex Garland film, Civil War, depicts a United States torn into several factions – and has been criticized for failing to explain how the conflict began. But the fight is the main thing. All our senseless anger must go somewhere, seeking the release valve of sanctioned violence, directed by the logic of wild rhetoric. In the 1850s, America witnessed prophetic killings during the John Brown Raid or Bleeding Kansas, but it was the 1860 election that sparked all-out war – because the South believed that Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was the devil and his victory an existential threat.
Lincoln would have despised Trump, but would also have recognized in the current danger the desire for death that has haunted his country since its birth. Abe once observed that a country so rich in geography and talent could never be conquered by foreigners. “As a nation of free men, we must live through all times, or die by suicide.”
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