The witness list is shrinking. A closing statement could come as early as Tuesday. A Manhattan jury will then gather in the first criminal trial for a former president to decide whether Donald J. Trump will campaign as a convicted felon this fall.
The political impact of one of the most important jury deliberations in American history is unpredictable.
“Who knows?” Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who has long been a Trump critic, said: “Today, the first casualty of I-is-right-you-are-evil politics is institutional credibility. “We no longer engage in politics that accepts fair facts.”
But whether this ruling is a political turning point or not, this election will be a turning point in the presidential election.
This case is the only one of four indictments filed against President Trump that is expected to go to trial before Election Day, even though the charge of falsifying financial records related to payments to porn stars does not match the seriousness of the crime. The indictment accuses President Trump of attempting to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in 2020.
There is now little doubt that President Trump’s base will not abandon him. What is less clear is how swing voters, who have recently expressed diminished support for Mr. Biden and have even flirted with Mr. Trump, or some traditional Democratic constituencies (young, black, Hispanic voters) will handle the conviction.
“We’ve looked at a lot of polls that suggest a significant number of voters will turn away from Trump if he’s convicted,” said Jim Margolis, a veteran Democratic strategist and ad producer. “I hope that’s true. But if past is prologue, I don’t think we can expect that to happen.”
Ahead of the ruling, President Trump’s political playbook is unpredictable and outdated.
His experience through multiple investigations, civil trials, and two impeachments provided an example of how he would declare victory over the deep state that tried and failed to save him if he was acquitted or returned by a jury. It’s also a roadmap for how he will attempt to undermine the prosecution’s legitimacy as a partisan sham designed to undermine his candidacy if he is convicted. This is a message he and his allies have been hammering for months.
In Trumpian shorthand, according to his previous comments, if not guilty it would be “absolutely not guilty,” and if found guilty it would be “election interference.”
Trump spokesman Stephen Cheng said in a statement that the president’s team “will fight and crush the Biden trial fraud across the country.”
The Biden campaign has largely avoided speaking directly about the trial, providing no basis for Republican claims made without evidence that his administration was behind the New York incident. But his political maneuvering, which he declined to comment on, was a wink at last week’s trial, including selling shirts after Mr. Biden proposed a “free on Wednesday” debate, a weekday when the trial was suspended.
But the Trump campaign, with its dramatic flair and limited travel schedule due to the trial, has planned a large rally in the Bronx for Thursday, the same day a jury could return its verdict. This is a combustible situation in a country where violence has become an ugly part of the political landscape.
President Trump held an event where he called some of those who were criminally charged for their participation in the January 6 terrorist attacks ‘hostages’ and played a recording of the defendants singing the national anthem in prison. A man who broke into former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home last week and beat her husband with a hammer has been sentenced to 30 years in federal prison.
Whatever the ruling, advertising strategy won’t change, said Bradley Beychok, co-founder of the progressive group American Bridge, which last week pledged to launch a $140 million anti-Trump ad campaign. .
“Democrats have to be careful not to take the bait that our job is simply to tell voters how bad, evil and terrible Donald Trump is,” he said. “He is all those things, but we have to focus on how this impacts their daily lives.”
Veteran Republican strategist Alex Castellanos explained that as the trial reached its conclusion, Trump would win on heads and Biden would lose on tails.
He said of President Trump, “If he is acquitted, he will be vindicated, and if found guilty, he will be a martyr. “This is how you start a religion.”
Mr. Castellanos explained that President Trump’s Teflon-like stance is rooted in a promise to overturn institutions and institutional norms that many in the country feel have been poorly served.
“He can captivate women with words, and he can say about John McCain, ‘I like a hero who isn’t captivated,’ and we all think this is the end of him and this is going to hurt him,” Mr. Castellanos said. he said “What does history tell us? He could really shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. Because it’s not about him. It’s about who he’s trying to stop. The reason he can eat kryptonite is because he was elected to be the grenade under the facility door.”
Campaigning for president under a cloud of conviction is unprecedented. One of the few high-profile examples of a politician getting on the ballot soon after being convicted is former Senator Ted Stevens, who ran for re-election in 2008 just days after being convicted of seven felonies. Failed. A decision will not be made until absentee ballots are counted.
But a recent New York Times/Siena College survey of battleground states found that 36% of voters said they were not paying any attention during this historic trial. And significant independent voters are much less engaged, with 45% saying they pay little attention.
Mr. Margolis, the Democratic strategist, said the lack of television cameras in the courtroom was a missing element.
“There is no live TV, there is no video of Stormy testifying, there is no footage of Trump sleeping,” he said of Stormy Daniels, the woman at the center of the silence whose alleged sexual encounters with President Trump he has denied. Money case. “That’s a big reason why the trial didn’t rock America.”
The Trump campaign has been asking voters in polls which news stories they read most, and a source familiar with the survey said the trial did not top 20%.
Perhaps as a result, a criminal conviction can still be a shock. A Times/Siena poll found that only 35% of voters in six districts said a conviction was very or somewhat likely.
Voters were divided on whether President Trump could receive a fair trial in New York along predictable partisan lines. But roughly one in five Democrats thought he couldn’t get a fair trial, and about the same percentage of Republicans thought he could. A few independents thought he could not get a fair trial.
One of the political costs of the trial has already been incurred by Mr. Trump. He was stuck in New York four days a week for a month, which is important when a candidate’s time is often considered a campaign’s most valuable resource.
Murphy, the Republican strategist, said Trump’s daily courthouse comments before the cameras have undermined the dictator image he seeks to project, even as he has an array of sycophantic supporters behind him.
“His brand is power. What he likes is to be cocky in front of adoring crowds,” Mr. Murphy said. Rather, he said, the comments made President Trump look like “an old, dirty lion caught in a net.”
“The whole vibe of caged, defeated animals is not good for Trump,” he said.
