For Trump, ‘Guilty’ May Not Matter

 

OPINION

FRANK BRUNI

For Trump, ‘Guilty’ May Not Matter

May 30, 2024

Frank Bruni

By Frank Bruni

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/opinion/trump-guilty-verdict-defense.html

 

Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.

 

The first former American president to be put on trial is now the first former American president to be convicted of a felony. Those milestones should be tombstones. A normal mortal doesn’t rise from that political grave.

 

But Donald Trump? I could see him skipping out of the cemetery, all the way back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I could see “guilty” being a mere bump in the road. I could even see it being an accelerant, as his indictment arguably was.

 

That’s because he has spent much of his lifetime and all of his political career preparing for a chapter like the current one — carefully constructing and ceaselessly repeating a narrative in which there are forces out to get him, they’ll use whatever trickery they must and their accusations are never, ever to be trusted.

 

I long ago lost count of the times that “witch hunt” tumbled from his lips or his keyboard. Same for “rigged.” He wasn’t just venting. He was girding, an amoral storyteller insisting on a story and a moral different from the ones that those nefarious establishment types were pushing. Trump came to understand that commanding people’s attention could get him only so far, while commanding their realities might enable him to get away with anything.

 

Or not. There’s no precedent for what just happened in a Manhattan courtroom, where the jury convicted him on all 34 counts, and for this juncture in American political life. There’s no way to know how it plays out. More than a few voter surveys over recent months augured trouble for Trump if the jury’s deliberations ended as they just did — with his conviction. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll released in early May, 16 percent of the respondents who identified themselves as Trump backers said that they’d reconsider their support if he was convicted, and 4 percent said that they’d withdraw it. The latter group alone could be large enough to tip the election to President Biden in a race this seemingly close.

 

But those voters were speaking hypothetically — before learning any details of the jury’s deliberations, before the event in question came to pass, before Trump took his turn spinning the results, as he will furiously and flamboyantly do over the coming days and weeks.

 

He actually started on Wednesday morning, just after Justice Juan Merchan delivered his final instructions to the jurors. Trump complained outside court that even “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges” in the face of directions like Merchan’s. Trump called the judge “corrupt.” “These charges are rigged,” he said. “The whole thing is rigged.” Later Wednesday, he took to Truth Social: “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE CHARGES ARE IN THIS RIGGED CASE,” he bellowed, typographically speaking, as the jury deliberated. “I AM ENTITLED TO SPECIFICITY JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE. THERE IS NO CRIME!”

 

Jurors determined otherwise, but I never trusted the idea that supporters would abandon Trump if he was convicted. It didn’t and doesn’t make sense. They weren’t driven from him by two impeachments; by his despicable role in the rioting on Jan. 6, 2021; by his contemptible attacks on anyone who defies him and everything that stands in his way; or by his sustained and general rottenness, and yet the subjective judgment of 12 Manhattanites figuring out whether to trust a cast of colorful (to say the least) witnesses and surfing a sea of legalese will beget a political divorce?

 

The theory, as I understand it, is that those supporters can’t wrap their sensibilities or sensitivities around the coexistence of “felon” and “president,” of “convict” and “commander in chief.” It’s a perversity too far. But that, too, doesn’t add up: Trump has been torching traditions and exploding norms since he first declared his 2016 presidential campaign. That scorched earth is fertile soil for shrugging at this “guilty.” At his constant prodding, a big chunk of the electorate blew past propriety and dispensed with all political etiquette a while back.

 

And big chunks of the electorate are immovable these days, anyway. They’ve picked their tribe, perfected their tribalism and decided that whatever their leaders’ rough spots or rap sheets, the ideologues and crooks on the other side are worse. That’s why true swing voters are scarce and ticket splitting rare (though there are reports this year of its resurgence). And that’s part of why Trump probably isn’t finished.

 

The likelihood of his political survival is reflected in the dearth of defections from Team Trump since it became clear that the Manhattan trial would start and finish well before Election Day in November. His allies and enablers have always known that his conviction was a real possibility, but few if any ran for cover. Few put even a few extra inches of distance between themselves and Trump.

 

The sycophants vying to be his running mate groveled no less publicly or pathetically. The House speaker showed up at his trial. Other Republican members of Congress dutifully parroted his message of martyrdom and tried to redirect the spotlight from Trump’s behavior to Joe Biden’s, to Hunter Biden’s, to Alejandro Mayorkas’s. If they were worried about the imminent end of Trump’s political viability, they sure did a masterly pantomime of the opposite.

 

And Trump? He took his hyperbole and histrionics to new heights, wrongly claiming last week that the Biden administration had authorized his assassination when federal agents searched Mar-a-Lago for the classified documents that Trump was keeping there. With a verdict looming, Trump was reminding his supporters and repeating the lesson: I am quarry. I am victim. My predators are ruthless. That’s the only lens through which to view what’s happening. That’s the only relevant prism.

 

He has persuaded them of that to this point. Why would it change now, especially when he caught the lucky break of having the least damning, least compelling of the four criminal prosecutions against him be the first one up (and almost certainly the only one to go to trial before Election Day)? It’s the case most easily characterized as an overreaction — as much ado about rutting.

 

A lot right now depends on Trump’s demeanor as he rages. The trial undercut his customary proclamations of superpotency; his stewing, slouching and snoozing at the defendant’s table accentuated his age and emphasized his vulnerability. If he looks and sounds terrified as the verdict sinks in and the appeals begin, it could diminish his stature among the least ardent of his supporters. And if his supporters react to his conviction with a reprise of bedlam and violence of Jan. 6? Voters could decide that the whole Trump show is too combustible a production.

 

But the trial and its conclusion slot neatly into the Trump-against-the-world worldview that he has promoted so assertively, so continuously and, as his sustained perch atop the Republican Party demonstrates, so successfully. Indeed, the whole point of promoting it was inoculation against potentially ruinous circumstances like Thursday’s verdict.

 

In the eyes of many voters, his prosecution proves his persecution. It’s as much affirmation as condemnation. And it’s all the more reason for him — and for them — to press on.

 

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book "The Age of Grievance" and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.  Instagram  Threads  @FrankBruni • Facebook