Trump’s Felony Conviction Matters — Just Not to His Supporters
The president-elect tried hard to forestall the black mark, but it won’t matter much to the movement he leads.
A felon walks into the Oval Office ...
Photographer: Steven Hirsch/New York Post/Bloomberg
Donald Trump will be sentenced this morning in New York for a criminal fraud conviction decided last May despite months of legal maneuvers aimed at forestalling the hearing and an unsuccessful, last-minute request to the Supreme Court to intervene. He’ll be a convicted felon when he is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20 — the first Oval Office occupant to have that distinction on his resume.
Trump very much wanted this to be otherwise. Had he felt differently about it, his lawyers wouldn’t have pressed so hard to delay or permanently postpone today’s hearing. His strongest supporters will care little; most members of his party even less. Trump has spent decades upending so many norms, breaking so many rules and thumbing his nose at so many laws that a criminal conviction for 34 felonies orchestrated to falsify business records and bury sex scandals to keep his 2016 presidential bid afloat is weak brew.