Guilty Verdict Would Doom Trump And Save America At The Same Time
Trump’s clownish, spoiled-child antics during a federal court hearing last week shows the ex-president is getting increasingly unhinged and increasingly freaked out about losing his empire and his freedom.
I rarely agree with MAGA and the clown prince but this time I take him at his words he said in November 2016, that a candidate under federal investigation “has no right to be running” and that it would be “virtually impossible” for a president under indictment to govern.
Trump made the comments at rallies in North Carolina, and Colorado in reference to the Oct. 28 revelation to Congress by then-FBI Director James Comey that his agency had reopened a criminal investigation into Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.
According to CNN, trump was in Concord, N.C., on Nov. 3, 2016, when he said that a Clinton victory “would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government.”
He said that Clinton was “likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up — in my opinion — in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.” […] “She has no right to be running, you know that. No right.”
He again emphasized at a Nov. 5 rally in Denver that as “the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation,” Clinton’s controversies would make it “virtually impossible for her to govern.”
The man was right and a growing number of Americans agree.
Trump has been charged with dozens of felonies across four cases: two federal, one in New York and another in Georgia. Separately, a civil fraud trial is underway in New York. Trump is currently the likely GOP candidate. But that could change quickly if trump is convicted of one of a series of federal charges.
Recent polls show that trump supporters believe the charges are trumped up, rigged by a corrupt Justice Department that wants to keep trump away from the White House. But the polls also indicate that while Americans may mistrust the government, they maintain trust in the jury system comprised of fellow, everyday Americans.
Polls show that if trump is convicted of any of a series of allegations, his support would falter in swing states by enough to cost him reelection. And if trump is convicted and still runs for president, he could find himself trying to campaign behind prison bars. He might consider taking a few campaign tips from a famous socialist who ran a losing campaign from prison or a very infamous animal abuser who also is a penitentiary where he also is seeking the presidency.
CNN’s Entrance Poll of 1,628 GOP Iowa caucusgoers found that 31 percent said if trump is convicted of a crime this year, he would not be “fit to be president.” A January poll by Reuters/Ipsos found that 58 percent of American adults would not vote for trump if he were “convicted of a felony crime by a jury.” A poll by Quinnipiac University showed that 68 percent of all Americans and 58 percent of Republicans said a person convicted of a felony should not be eligible to run for president.
A New York Times/Siena College poll last month suggested a “not-insignificant minority” of trump supporters could change their minds if he’s convicted in any of the four cases, even after hypothetically winning the primary.
An earlier poll in November determined that around 6 percent of voters across swing states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, say they would switch their votes to Biden if trump is convicted. That would be enough, potentially, to decide the election.
Of course, even if convicted, trump could legally still run for president and would undoubtedly still be a viable candidate. Last week, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said he would support the Republican nominee for president in 2024, even if that meant backing former trump as a hypothetical convicted felon.
If trump goes to prison and continues his presidential campaign, he would be the second serious presidential candidate in history to run from prison.
Eugene V. Debs was the Socialist Party candidate for president in 1920 when he was incarcerated at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Debs had been sentenced on Sept. 18, 1918, to 10 years in prison for violating the Espionage and Sedition Acts. The 62-year-old Debs was charged after taking his anti-war crusade throughout the Midwest, where he gave impassioned speeches against the war, the sedition act and the military draft.
His run in 1920 was Debs’ fifth try for the White House. While in prison, he was permitted to give one political statement a week, which was distributed to the news wires. Supporters campaigned for him with posters featuring the slogan “From Atlanta Prison to the White House, 1920” and campaign buttons that showed Debs in a prison jumpsuit with the words “For President: Convict №9653.”
Trump was taking a cue from Debs when he had his recent prison mug shot emblazoned on T-shirts and other campaign merch. Whether he would abide by a one statement a week rule is highly unlikely.
Debs made a respectable showing as he collected more than 910,000 votes or 3.4 percent of the popular vote, still far behind the Republican winner, Sen. Warren G. Harding and Democrat, Gov. James M. Cox, both of Ohio.
If he does go to prison, trump may be hoping it gives him a political boost in the way prison did for Debs who found 50,000 supporters lined up to greet him when he was paroled and his train pulled into his home town of Terra Haute, Ind.
If trump finds his way to the big house, he may be in the company of another presidential hopeful, Joseph Maldonado, known as Joe Exotic and The Tiger King. Exotic is currently serving 22 years in prison on 17 federal charges of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for hire of his rival, Carole Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue.
Exotic operated the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, from 1999 to 2018.
Like trump, Exotic is certainly persistent. He ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, receiving 962 votes, somewhat fewer than trump’s total of 62.9 million votes. He lost a second time when he ran as a Libertarian in the 2020 presidential race.
Exotic ran in the 2018 Libertarian Party primary election for Governor of Oklahoma. He received 664 votes in the primary, finishing last among the three Libertarian candidates. In 2019, following his arrest, the Oklahoma state Republican convention voted tossed him out of the party.
On March 13, 2023, Exotic announced a bid for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in the 2024 election, which he said he will run from prison. A month later, he switched to Democrat.
Lyndon LaRouche Jr. ran for president nine times and in 1992, he campaigned from prison and garnered less 0.1 percent of total votes. LaRouche had been convicted of fraud and served five years in prison, from 1989 to 1994,
LaRouche founded the U.S. Labor Party in 1973. He was a conspiracy theorist and ran for president every time from 1976 to 2004. He peaked with 78,000 votes in the 1984 presidential election. He ran as a Democrat in 1996 and received 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. In 2000, he garnered enough primary votes to qualify for delegates in some states, but the Democratic National Committee barred LaRouche from attending the Democratic National Convention.
LaRouche didn’t claim he lost the presidency through voter fraud but his platform was radical as he predicted financial disaster by 1980 accompanied by famine and the extinction of the human race within 15 years. He also backed a debt moratorium; nationalization of banks; government investment in industry especially in the aerospace sector, and an “International Development Bank” to facilitate higher food production. When Legionnaires’ disease surfaced in the U.S. in 1980, LaRouche said it was caused by senators who opposed vaccination were suppressing as part of a “genocidal policy.” Can anyone say “China hoax?”
And last among the more unlikely candidates is Keith Judd, 66, known as “Dark Priest” and “Mtr. President.” Judd says he has run for president in every election since 1996. Judd was serving a 210 month federal prison sentence for extortion when he had his biggest success in the 2012 Democratic primary in West Virginia. Judd won 41 percent of the vote against Obama, then the highest single-state vote share that any of Obama’s primary opponents had achieved in 2012.
Judd does not say that he is sent by God but he does claim to be a former member of the Federation of Super Heroes.
In 1999 Judd was convicted of two counts of “mailing a threatening communication with intent to extort money or something of value.” He had sent postcards with the warning, “Send the money back now, Keith Judd, Last Chance or Dead” and a package containing a semen stained Playboy, a knife inside the magazine, a key chain, and his father’s military discharge papers. He also sent letters to jurors after his trial.
Trump is the latest in a line of disgraced candidates who were indicted while they campaigned for office.
Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas sought the Republican nomination in the 2016 election. A Travis County grand jury indicted Perry on two felonies in 2014, charging that he threatened to cut off funding to the office of a Democratic district attorney in an effort to pressure her to leave office. Perry dropped out of the race three months later. The indictments were eventually dismissed.
Joseph P. Ganim was the Democratic mayor of Bridgeport, Conn., when he was convicted on federal corruption charges in the early 2000s. Ganim was returned to the mayor’s office in 2015 after promising the voters that he would go straight.
Derrick Evans resigned as a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates after he filmed himself entering the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, as part of the pro-Trump mob trying to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election. Evans pleaded guilty to a civil disorder charge and was sentenced to three months in jail. Now, Evans is a candidate for Congress who claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen from trump.
Marion S. Barry Jr. was mayor of Washington, D.C. when he was convicted in 1990 on a cocaine charge. Voters forgave him and elected him to his fourth term in office in 1994.
In Louisiana, former Gov. Edwin Edwards spent eight years in prison on corruption charges and lost an attempt for a political comeback when he lost a run for Congress in 2014.