It’s startling enough that a former president of the United States stands convicted of 34 felonies, a permanent stain on him and the world’s most powerful office.
But what’s most unthinkable is the prospect of voters rewarding Donald Trump’s criminal behavior with the presidency. Polls show that the jury’s guilty verdict will actually make some voters more likely to vote for Trump, and that’s scary.
Americans have always had a certain fascination for outlaws. But what’s at stake here is the leadership of the world’s oldest and greatest democracy.
In a world with norms, before Trump shattered them, he would have withdrawn from politics in disgrace and saved himself and his party from shame.
But Trump’s perverse accomplishment has been to purge shame, accountability, morality and respect for the law from the character expected from one of America’s two great political parties. He has transformed the Grand Old Party into the cult of a dictator.
Parroting Trump’s lies
Fifty years ago, principled Republican leaders demanded that President Richard Nixon resign over conduct less dire than most of the charges still facing Trump. Nearly all of Nixon’s defenders peeled away as the evidence piled up.
But nearly every Republican who has spoken out or tweeted since the Trump verdict has parroted his ridiculous lie that he’s the innocent victim of political persecution. Florida’s top three, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, have debased themselves and their offices.
In sharp contrast to those profiles in cowardice, Larry Hogan, the former two-term Republican governor of Maryland and the GOP nominee for Senate there, stood out for what he posted on social media before the jury verdict was announced.
“Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process,” Hogan wrote. “At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders — regardless of party — must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
True to form, a Trump operative replied: “You just ended your campaign.”
A tawdry plot
Trump brought the convictions on himself with a tawdry plot to suppress p*rn star Stormy Daniels’ account of a one-night stand he initiated in a Lake Tahoe hotel room while his third wife was at home with their infant son. He casually broke whatever laws were in the way of pretending that $130,000 in hush money was a legitimate, tax-deductible legal expense.
At the time, supporters were reeling from disclosure of the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump boasted of grabbing women by the genitals. The 2016 election was close, and Trump didn’t think he could afford another sex scandal. Nixon could have told him, the coverup is worse than the crime.
Citizens don’t get to pick and choose which laws to obey. The laws Trump broke are essential to fair conduct of commerce and the dutiful payment of taxes.
The seven men and five women who convicted him are heroes whose lives could be in danger if they become known.
The diligence of the New York court casts an unfavorable light on the others that have catered to Trump by delaying his trials on the election interference cases in Georgia and Washington and the classified document charges in Florida.
Three more trials
The U.S. Supreme Court should have let the Washington case proceed despite Trump’s facetious immunity claim.
Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’ romance with an assistant has no bearing on her racketeering case against Trump. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida, a Trump appointee, so openly favors him that the special counsel should have sought her removal long ago.
The consequence of all that stonewalling is that Thursday’s convictions are probably the last ones to be had before the election in which Trump aims to regain the influence to kill the federal cases against him and keep himself out of prison.
The testimony in a dingy Manhattan courtroom should have made clear to any open-minded citizens, as it did to the jury, that Trump was deeply involved in the hush money cover-up, a systematic disrespect for the rule of law.
Those to whom that fact also ought to be clear are the delegates who will assemble for the Republican National Convention four days after Trump’s scheduled July 11 sentencing.
The last word
A political party with any respect for a history as noble as the GOP’s — a political party still loyal to the Constitution — would find a way to reject Trump and come up with another nominee deserving of the whole nation’s respect. The number of such people is not large, but neither is it zero.
Larry Hogan comes to mind. So do Mitt Romney, Chris Christie, Jeff Flake and Chris Sununu. This is all wishful thinking, of course.
But the entire electorate — all the American people — will have the last word on who will occupy the White House next January, and to what extent it matters that one candidate is now a convicted criminal.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
