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President-elect Donald Trump appears remotely for a sentencing hearing in front of New York State Judge Juan Merchan in his hush money case at New York Criminal Court in New York City, on Jan. 10, 2025.
Trump avoids jail in hush money sentencing
Trump appeared virtually from Florida for the sentencing, maintaining his innocence and calling the case a “political witch hunt.”
Which case was this one again? It centered on payments made to Daniels to prevent her from discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump before the 2016 election. Trump denies any encounter occurred and claims the payments were legitimate legal expenses.
Why was he given a no-punishment verdict? Judge Merchan explained that the immunity protections Trump will have once he becomes president in 10 days “is a factor that overrides all others,” though he emphasized that these protections “do not erase a jury verdict.”
Notably, this was the only one of Trump’s four criminal indictments to go to trial. The other cases, including federal prosecutions by special counsel Jack Smith and a Georgia election interference case, have either been closed or stalled following Trump's election victory.Former President Donald Trump gives brief remarks alongside his attorney Todd Blanche at the conclusion of his hush money trial at Manhattan criminal court on July 11.
Judge pushes Trump’s sentencing until after election. Why?
Former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in his New York hush-money case, which had been scheduled for Sept. 18, has been delayed until after Election Day.
Judge Juan Merchan on Friday announced that Trump would not be sentenced until Nov. 26. Merchan said the decision was made to “avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.”
In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in relation to a hush money payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors argued that the payment was tied to Trump’s desire to protect his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump could be sentenced to up to four years in prison, but legal scholars say this is unlikely given his lack of a criminal record — and the fact this was not a violent crime.
“The court did the right thing in trying to turn down the temperature by avoiding this politically charged sentencing,” says Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group’s managing director for the US.
We’ll also be watching to see how Merchan rules regarding the Trump legal team’s push for the verdict to be overturned and for the case to be dismissed in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on presidential immunity. Merchan announced on Friday that he was also delaying his decision on this matter until November 12, a week after the election.
Do Donald Trump’s criminal convictions put American democracy at risk?
“Having crossed the Rubicon [of January 6],” Glasser says, “I think that the idea that we’re just treating this as a normal election between two warring tribes with different ideologies is really what history is going to remember about this moment, unfortunately.”
“We’ve grown accustomed to the luxury of repeated, peaceful transfers of power,” Bharara adds, “There’s nothing that guarantees that just because the US has been a great democracy, it will persist in being democratic.”
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
Will Trump's criminal conviction cost him votes?
Just days after former President Donald Trump’s historic felony conviction, Ian Bremmer sits down with the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and former US Attorney Preet Bharara to discuss the impact of the verdict conviction on the 2024 election and democracy itself.
What does Donald Trump’s historic criminal conviction mean for the 2024 election and for democracy itself? As the first US president to be convicted of a crime, Trump’s 34 felony counts have stirred significant political and legal turmoil, with many in his party faithful choosing the former president over the justice system. "The GOP's revisionist history on the trial has already begun," Glasser tells Bremmer. Bharara also underscores the trial’s legitimacy, stating, "It was an open and fair proceeding. There was a judge who ruled often for the prosecution, but often as well for Donald Trump's side."Bharara addresses the allegations of political motivation behind the trial, telling Ian, "The accusations that some folks on the Trump side are making about how this was a politicized witch hunt, it was preordained, all of that" is a dangerous game. Bharara also highlights the gravity of the situation, saying, "There are people on the progressive side, on the Biden side who think that democracy is in danger. I'm one of those people." Glasser echoes this concern, reflecting on Trump's impact on elections, "What Trump tried to do in 2020 as well as 2016 was to nullify the votes of an election and therefore of the people, the masses' votes, not the individuals."
Both guests underscore the critical crossroads at which American democracy stands and the profound consequences of Trump's conviction for the upcoming election. Whether or not Trump wins in November is an open question. So, too, is the fate of our democratic institutions.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
GOP's response to Trump verdict: An "ominous sign" for the future?
It’s far too early to say how former President Trump’s 34 felony convictions in the New York hush money case will affect the 2024 US presidential election, but make no mistake, the verdict has far-reaching implications for the future of the Republican party.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer was joined by New Yorker columnist Susan Glasser and former US attorney Preet Bharara for a frank look at what Trump’s conviction means for the GOP moving forward. As historic as Trump’s conviction is, the political response may be even more unprecedented and could have dangerous implications not just for Republicans or capital “D” Democrats but for our already fragile, lower-case “d” democracy.
“This is a marker of the escalation that we’re seeing in 2024,” Glasser says, pointing to the GOP attacks on the US justice system, “I think it’s a sign of where the Republican party is at, that they’ve essentially mortgaged the party so completely to the fate of one individual, that they’re willing to tear down what remains of faith in our institutions.”
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
Will Trump's criminal conviction ruin his campaign - or American democracy? Insights from Susan Glasser and Preet Bharara
Listen: On this episode of the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer discusses the political and legal implications of Donald Trump’s felony conviction for the 2024 election and for democracy itself with the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and former US Attorney Preet Bharara.
He’s the first US president to be convicted of a crime. Donald Trump’s 34 felony counts have upended the 2024 Presidential election (for now) and exposed the vulnerability of core democratic institutions like the justice system.
"The GOP's revisionist history on the trial has already begun," The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser tells Bremmer. Former US Attorney Preet Bharara also underscores the trial’s legitimacy, stating, "It was an open and fair proceeding. There was a judge who ruled often for the prosecution, but often as well for Donald Trump's side."
"The [Republican] party” Glasser adds, “has essentially mortgaged itself to the fate of one individual."
Both guests underscore the critical crossroads at which American democracy stands and the profound consequences of Trump's conviction for the upcoming election. Whether or not Trump wins in November is an open question. So, too, is the fate of our democratic institutions.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
TRANSCRIPT: Will Trump's criminal conviction ruin his campaign - or American democracy? Insights from Susan Glasser and Preet Bharara
Ian Bremmer:
Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer and today, you've heard the news, you've seen the headlines, you probably already have an opinion, but we have to talk about it. Former President Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felony counts in a New York criminal case about hush-money payments on the eve of the 2016 election.
It's the first time any US president, current or former, has been found guilty of a crime. And of course, everyone is asking how this will impact the presidential election in November, but the truth is, no one knows. Political forecasting after unprecedented news is a recipe for regret.
More important than what the verdict means for Republicans or capital D Democrats, is what it means for our already-fragile, lower case “d” democracy. As historic as Trump's conviction is, the political response, even more extraordinary. Republican leadership is uniformly calling it an illegitimate witch hunt and blatant political persecution. Democrats say justice has been served and the verdict a sign the system works.
Can the Constitution withstand this kind of stress test? Are our democratic institutions at risk of falling apart? I'm joined today by former US attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara and political columnist for The New Yorker, Susan Glasser. Let's get to it.
Joining me to discuss the Trump verdict and the implications for our election, Preet Bharara and Susan Glasser, delighted to see you both. Preet, let me start with you. So much of the backlash to this verdict from the GOP has been about the trial itself being illegitimate. Should this case have been brought in the way that it was by the district attorney, something you have a lot of experience with?
Preet Bharara:
Yeah. Look, the case was brought after a lot of deliberation on the part of the district attorney. The accusations that some folks on the Trump side are making about how this was a politicized witch hunt, it was preordained, all of that misses a very important historical fact. And that is when Alvin Bragg came into office, there had been a number of prosecutors, including his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, who were building a case with respect to financial fraud against Trump and his organization, the inflation of assets and the deflation of assets when it suited him.
Mark Pomerantz and another outside lawyer had developed the case. They ended up quitting with some fanfare when Alvin Bragg refused to pursue that case. So, if Alvin Bragg came in with an agenda to get Donald Trump, he had a packaged case that he could have brought that very seasoned prosecutors who'd served both as federal prosecutors and state prosecutors had wrapped up in a bow for him to do. But he thought, in exercise of his discretion using his judgment, that that was not appropriate. And this other case was one that after some period of time he decided to bring.
And by the way, it was an open and fair proceeding. There was a judge who ruled often for the prosecution, but often as well for Donald Trump's side, 12 jurors who were screened. And by the way, the defense got to participate in this election of that jury, found him guilty pretty definitively and pretty quickly, and there will now be an opportunity for an appeal. So, all the hallmarks of a free and open rule of law proceeding were met here.
Ian Bremmer:
Should the charges have been raised from a misdemeanor to a felony? How unusual is that? Is there any view in your sensibility that that decision itself was politicized?
Preet Bharara:
No, I don't think so. It is provided for by law. There's a misdemeanor statute and there's a felony mechanism in that statute as well. And that's done on a regular basis. Maybe these particular facts involving a further violation of law relating to an election or the promotion of someone's election by unlawful means. I'm not sure if that's a particular scenario has ever been brought before, but Donald Trump is a particularly interesting and unusual defendant and miscreant in this proceeding and in other proceedings.
And look, there's going to be an appeal. The people on the Trump side are saying it's a foregone conclusion that this conviction will be overturned. I don't think that's the case. The same way that I don't think it's the case that it's 100% guaranteed that the conviction will be affirmed, one of which you mentioned, and we'll see how a court of appeals thinks about that. And ultimately if there's a constitutional question, which I'm not sure there is, but if there's a constitutional question-
Ian Bremmer:
Then it would go to the Supreme Court.
Preet Bharara:
Go to the Supreme Court.
Ian Bremmer:
So, you think that the appeal process not only is serious and legitimate, but it could well be overturned on appeal. That's certainly a possibility in your mind.
Preet Bharara:
It's unusual, it's unlikely. We had a pretty good track record in the Southern District of New York. We did not win an affirmance of every single conviction. There were a couple of times, a few times if you're pursuing a case vigorously and you have a docket of cases that are aggressive appropriately, sometimes judges on the appeals court will find that there was an instruction that was flawed, or some evidence came in that shouldn't have come in and they send it back for a retrial or they overturn it permanently. So, it's never possible to say that there's no possibility of a reversal. But by the way, for people who are interested in the political clock here and the timetable, there's no way that any of that's going to happen anytime before the election.
Ian Bremmer:
Right. And one thing that is going to happen before the election of course is sentencing. Do you have any quick view on what the likely sentence is going to be? I assume you don't think there's going to be serious jail time.
Preet Bharara:
The violations don't call for serious jail time. There are factors on both sides. On the one hand, he's a 77-year-old man who may not be a recidivist for whom this is a first-time offense. On the other hand, it's serious misconduct, the way it was characterized by the prosecution. Some of the conduct happened while he was sitting in the Oval Office as Commander in Chief and President of the United States. He has shown no remorse. He has violated the gag order 10 times. So those are factors in favor of some time of incarceration.
What I think is pretty clearly the case though is even if the judge decides that some period of incarceration is appropriate, three months, six months, eight months, whatever, that he will hold that in abeyance and give him bail pending appeal. Right? Because I think he will find that there's a significant enough basis to allow Trump, and it also solves the problem of his getting criticized for putting a major party candidate in prison, and I think he wants to avoid that. And so, he can have his cake and eat it too by imposing a prison sentence but holding off on it until a court of appeals weighs in on it.
Ian Bremmer:
Susan, appreciate your patience. I want to turn to you on the politics now. You wrote in your column last week that the GOP's revisionist history on the trial has already begun. Last Sunday Republican chair Lara Trump, yes related, berated Republican candidate Larry Hogan for calling on citizens to respect the judicial process. We've already seen congressional candidates use the verdict in their political ads. What do you make of all of this?
Susan Glasser:
This is a marker of the escalation that we're seeing in 2024. And so it's not just attacking the legitimacy of this specific trial or these specific charges against Donald Trump, but the immediate leap, and I should say clearly orchestrated in advance leap to a broader systemic attack, and not only that but rather than simply focus Trump and his supporters' ire on the New York prosecutor who brought these cases, immediately elevating it into and distorting it as if it were a federal issue in a federal case.
And I think that is certainly an ominous sign as far as what Trump might do were he to be re-elected to office. But even more broadly, I think it's a sign of where the Republican Party is at, that they have essentially mortgaged the party so completely to the fate of one individual that they're willing to tear down what remains of faith in our already teetering faith in institutions.
So, it strikes me that it's sometimes hard in this kind of year nine of the Trump era to say when we have crossed another line, but to me, I think we crossed another line. And the response to Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of the very blue state of Maryland was very instructive. Hogan didn't have some big statement celebrating Trump's conviction. All he said was what in the past would've been essentially comforting mush like, "Yay, the system works, support the right to a jury trial," and nothing very interesting about it except that even that is too controversial in today's GOP.
Preet Bharara:
I think Susan makes excellent points and you can bet a lot of money that if the case had gone the other way, Alvin Bragg, like I did when I was US attorney, even though there would've been disappointment, even though they thought they brought a righteous and meritorious case, would've said, "We respect the jury's verdict." And it's one thing to criticize the judge, criticize the parties, criticize the press and the coverage, it's quite a different thing to start criticizing ordinary Americans who are pressed into the civic duty of jury deliberation and service.
And the second point I want to make is the other accusation that is being leveled, which is kind of far-fetched and outlandish, which is par for the course, about why Alvin Bragg brought the case and why he shouldn't have, is that it was all orchestrated by the puppeteer President of the United States, Joe Biden, which as everyone here knows, we have a thing called federalism. Alvin Bragg was not appointed like I was by the President of the United States but was elected by the people of Manhattan. He doesn't report to the president. He doesn't talk to the president. He doesn't take direction from the president. And the other thing that makes it very peculiar and odd is that we are to believe that Joe Biden pulled the puppet strings on Alvin Bragg to get the rule of law to be shaped in the way he wanted it to take down his rival when as we speak, literally as we speak, his own flesh and blood son is on trial in federal court.
Ian Bremmer:
On trial, Hunter Biden, which I want to get to. Yeah, absolutely.
Preet Bharara:
Yeah. I mean, so the courts won. And Joe Biden has not fired the special prosecutor. He hasn't tried to pardon his son. He hasn't tried to interfere in that. And so, the idea that he's directing Alvin Bragg and doing nothing to save the skin of his own son doesn't square.
Ian Bremmer:
No, it's on its face ludicrous. Susan, I mean given all of that, the points that you make and that Preet just added to, I mean we're not just talking about a small number of fringe Trump loyalists. Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, the number of Republicans that have questioned the politicization of the process is astonishing. I mean, if you didn't have Preet's legal expertise and you were just tuning in to watch what was happening, you wouldn't know who to believe. You'd say, "Wow, clearly these are very sensible and respected people who were saying that the process has broken down." That does feel unprecedented, doesn't it, Susan?
Susan Glasser:
Yeah. I mean, I think that it is unfortunate that you have a situation—well, first of all, the vast majority of voices that you're hearing from are… We're not in year one of the Trump MAGA phenomenon. These are folks who have willingly abandoned the truth again and again and again in order to support Donald Trump, the vast majority of the Republican elected officials you're hearing from. So, I think that's an important note. It's not like that these are respected independent voices for the most part. They have mortgaged themselves, their political future and their party to Donald Trump.
What's interesting is that the small, small minority of remaining Trump skeptics in the Republican Party, many of them have also questioned the verdict, although if you look, their statements have not nearly been so robust in saying that it was the system itself. I have not seen Mitt Romney or Susan Collins or Mitch McConnell say that Joe Biden secretly orchestrated a conspiracy plot to do it.
Now, that's the problem of course with the enablers who have facilitated the ongoing hold of Donald Trump over the Republican Party is that they essentially kind of participate to a certain extent in the continuing delegitimization of institutions on Trump's behalf. And I noted in that respect, and Preet did not. I'm curious what he thinks about this. Trump is not just saying, "I'm going to keep fighting. I'm going to issue an appeal. I'm going to exhaust every legal remedy to stay out of jail."
He has already said, and his allies like House Speaker Mike Johnson are demanding that the Supreme Court intervene and talking openly about the bias of the Supreme Court. And I find that to be, again you want to talk about a norm shattered, I cannot conceive of any response in our political system before the Trump era in which that would've been possible. Mike Johnson specifically said the other day that he knows personally many of the Supreme Court justices and he thinks they should remedy this injustice to Donald Trump. Trump himself is using his social media platform to demand that the Supreme Court intervene.
One of the obvious reasons for his panic over this being in state court rather than federal court is that were he to be reelected, he can't pardon himself at the state level, but I don't know, Preet, why you think he's immediately demanding it be elevated to the Supreme Court and whether there's any legitimate basis for the Supreme Court to look at this.
Preet Bharara:
There is not. Look, Donald Trump and his allies to some extent take advantage of the fact that they can say anything, they can talk about any procedure they want with the understanding that even people who know better will go along because who wants to defy the sitting President of the United States? There is no mechanism that I'm aware of that anybody that I've heard who I respect can think of to take a state court conviction in New York or any other state directly to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. It's not done, doesn't happen. You got to go and exhaust your appeals process through the state court system, and then depending on if there's an issue of constitutional dimension or a split in some sense on a constitutional, then you take it to the Supreme Court.
Now, is that going to preclude Donald Trump from ordering his attorney to file some kind of extraordinary motion or writ to the Supreme Court? Probably not, but I don't think there's any That doesn't hold any water constitutionally or legally.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, Preet, I want to ask, you brought up the Hunter Biden trial. It is now just underway. Can you talk a little bit about the significance of that trial, the implications of it, both legal and political? Because I mean, on its basis, it doesn't seem to be, and we're talking about gun charges related to drug use, I mean, that's not really something that's super relevant to the presidency, and yet obviously these things are going to be conflated.
Preet Bharara:
Hunter Biden is a private citizen, has always been a private citizen. He's not the President of the United States. He's not running to be the President of the United States. He's getting all this attention because of his celebrity based on his connection by blood to the sitting President of the United States.
And it's extraordinary in the way that I described earlier that here you, I mean, in a million years, to be counterfactual for a moment, in a million years, can you imagine if Donald Trump got reelected and a Joe Biden appointed US attorney who was held over for some period of time, decided to indict and go to trial against Donald Trump Jr. that Donald Trump Sr. would stand idly by not comment on it, not pardon his son, not direct-
Ian Bremmer:
No. It's inconceivable. It's inconceivable.
Preet Bharara:
Inconceivable.
Ian Bremmer:
That's right, that's right.
Preet Bharara:
So when you ask what's the significance of it, that significance I think is being lost on people. The fact that Joe Biden is standing… The First Lady of the United States is in the courtroom with her son, with her and Joe Biden's son, to give moral support, not exercising any authority. He doesn't have any authority over Alvin Bragg, but he could absolutely give direction, as Donald Trump says, he would do and plans to do in terms of retribution against his political enemies if he were to go back into office.
Now, on the question of the seriousness of the charge, lots of people have commented that we have a series of gun laws in place. I prosecuted a number of them of illegal possession of a handgun. Most commonly that's brought if you're a prior convicted felon. By the way, incidental to this and the intersection of the Trump case and the Hunter Biden cases, Donald Trump now convicted cannot possess a firearm. So put that to the side for a moment. But most of the time those cases are brought if someone who's been convicted of a felony, state or federal, is in possession of a firearm. There's some other provisions as well, very, very seldom used across the country. If you are addicted to a substance or if you lie about your addiction or use of a substance, there's a provision of a statute that says that that's a violation of law.
What's also super interesting here that I haven't heard a lot talked about is you have a strange collection of bedfellows here. Ordinarily, right, the average progressive would say you have to enforce the gun laws very strictly. And of course, if someone's addicted to a substance and is dangerous and doesn't exercise judgment well, they should be prosecuted. That's standard operating procedure for the ideological side of the progressives.
By contrast, the average conservative who believes strongly in the Second Amendment would say, and there are challenges to other provisions of the statute right now wending their way through the Supreme Court, would say that is an overreach and just because you've been convicted of a crime, in the example I gave before, doesn't mean you should forever forfeit your constitutional right in the same way that a lot of people say just because you've been convicted of a crime, you shouldn't forfeit your right to vote forever and ever and ever. So the other significance of it is you can sort of tell where people are tribally as opposed to where they would be if this was an anonymous unknown garden variety defendant.
Susan Glasser:
It's very important to make the distinction between—these are the ultimate sort of asymmetrical cases. Donald Trump was accused of essentially distorting the 2016 election by paying this hush money to a former porn star. Hunter Biden is accused, private citizen is accused of owning a gun for 11 days and possibly lying on a form about it.
Now, I think you're right about the tribalism, absolutely, and it does strike me that Joe Biden has had terrible, terrible luck with his son. The timing of it is just, you couldn't even make this up, that literally while the Democrats finally get a couple days where they're focusing the lens squarely in this election for once not on Biden's age or what his record is in the country, but on Donald Trump and his fitness for office, and do they want a convicted felon in the White House, and then boom, two days later, Hunter Biden is on trial. The timing just is a reminder that Biden can't seem to catch a break.
It also goes to the fact that Hunter Biden, basically, they've had years of investigations and there was a bungled plea bargain in which he agreed to it and then withdrew when the federal prosecutors could not guarantee him that he would be safe from future other prosecutions. This is perhaps an example where the legal advice that Hunter Biden was given, and again, I-
Ian Bremmer:
... was not great, yeah.
Susan Glasser:
... can't speak to the validity of it, but it was in conflict certainly with his father's political necessity to not have a son on trial for federal gun charges when Donald Trump's criminality should be the big issue in the 2024 campaign from the point of view of Biden.
And so I just want to say though that we're talking a lot about the case itself in New York or the case itself now in Delaware, a lot of the incredibly overheated rhetoric that we are hearing from Republicans, which I think is very dangerous and is a harbinger of where a second Trump administration would go. But I also think it's important to pull back and to say, why is this happening?
No matter how much they spin me, I do not believe, and I don't think anyone should believe that Republicans or Donald Trump are happy about him being a convicted felon or that they think it's such a great thing for his campaign. If they thought it was such a great thing for his campaign, I think they would approach it very differently.
Ian Bremmer:
It's hard to say it's a great thing for his campaign, certainly in a very close race. Lots of people have consistently said that they are uncomfortable voting for a convict, for a convicted felon. And a lot of independents certainly say that, but we have also seen an extraordinary amount of money that's been raised by Trump on the back of this effort. This very coordinated campaign by Republicans to say, "This is a political hit job. It's a witch hunt. It's orchestrated by the president."
And then secondly, I mean, reveal preferences, Americans just don't seem to say that this case matters as much to them in how they vote and what they care about than issues that are closer to them on a day-to-day basis, like for example, inflation, like abortion, like the border. We're all sitting here talking about these unprecedented threats to the democratic system in the United States, which are clearly getting worse. The boundaries are eroding to prevent them from truly damaging permanently the American system. And yet either elites, the media and the citizenry don't seem to be taking it enormously seriously.
Susan Glasser:
I got to push back on that. I think that is the kind of cynical perspective, this idea that we're going to get into the media and elites bashing, Americans are perfectly... In the end, there's a long history that suggests that while issue polls are interesting and relevant, and certainly the economy you can argue has been a major driver of American elections, in the end, the history of modern presidential elections is that they are very much decided on the basis of perceptions around the personality of the candidates, number one.
Number two, it is not a media construction. It is not an elite construction to say... I find that to be really cynical actually. The idea that a regular American who is not a member of the media elite should not care that the possible President of the United States is going to be a convicted felon, I don't buy that. I think that's what Republicans want us to say. I think that they've spent a year coming up with a strategy where they would goose the numbers so that they had, "Oh, we had a big fundraising hall." In the end, I don't think that fundraising numbers in June are going to have any effect on the ultimate outcome of this presidential election.
I think that we're looking at a very close race because we have a very evenly divided country, and the question is really not what Americans in the aggregate think about this development of having a president who's a convicted felon. The very specific question is whether in the six or seven battleground states that are going to decide this election, there are sufficient number of concerned Republicans and/or Independents who simply cannot vote for Trump because he is a convicted felon.
Ian Bremmer:
So Susan, I mean, I understand. The media is the one group that I mentioned that you and I and Preet have some affiliation with, though I mean, I was also talking about voters. I was also talking about leaders, political leaders, corporate leaders. I mean again, reveal preferences as I see them at this stage in the election compared to other countries around the world is that threats to democracy don't seem to be the thing that's driving this election. It seems to me that other things are.
Susan Glasser:
No, no, I'm agreeing with you. I'm fascinated by that. And maybe, I mean what is your answer to why when you talk to corporate leaders, they're not more concerned?
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah. Yeah, I know. I mean, short-term-ism obviously is a piece of it. But a piece of it seems to be that nobody's all that worried. Maybe it's like the boy that cried wolf. I mean, Trump was already a president once for four years and democracy didn't fall apart and a lot of people had egg on face. And so a lot of people said January 6th was a coup. I don't believe it was actually attempted coup. I don't think that that was the right way to think about it. I don't think the US system was actually in danger the way it increasingly is this time around.
But I'm discussing this in part because here we are in the middle only five months away now from the election, soon people are going to start voting absentee, and most of them, it seems to me, aren't going to be voting on the issue that we're talking about right now, that we seem to think is very important. Preet, do you want to weigh in on this?
Preet Bharara:
There are people on the progressive side, on the Biden side who think the democracy's in danger. I'm one of those people. I care about institutions. I think people care less about institutions and less about process and less about principles than they care about outcome. I think we've become very, not just tribal, but the part of the tribalism that I think is showing a lot of force is the person on your side, whether it's abortion or trade or whatever else, and on the progressive side, the issues that they care about and the way in which some of this conversation is a little bit elite.
But I don't think that's a bad thing because I think our founding fathers were elite and lots of people on the right always invoke the founding fathers, which is a very elitist concept, right? The idea of democracy and institutions and separation of powers and political philosophy and political theory. That's elite subject matter. It's the backbone and foundation of the country. And I worry that some of that is being lost because nobody seems to care that much anymore. The processes are being subverted or being prejudiced in some way, or the peaceful transition to power was thwarted.
However, briefly, I disagree with your more sanguine view of that, Ian. That's a big deal. That's a gigantic deal, and I worry that people are less... I think it's worrisome the thing that you're pointing out that people seem less concerned about that because it's foundational. All the other things that you want, whether it's the freedom to bear arms or to have reproductive rights or anything else, all relies on a well-functioning, pluralistic democracy. And if you start talking about these as being only elitist thoughts, I think we're in big trouble.
There are people, whether you think they're right about this or not, who think the same of Joe Biden, who use the rhetoric of fascism and autocracy and authoritarian, which doesn't ring true to my ears, but there are people on the other side who say those exact same things about Joe Biden. So maybe it's a wash, maybe it's not. And I would like to hear someone intelligent explain that to me as well.
Susan Glasser:
You can see we've hit the kind of sensitive nerve of this 2024 election. And just, again, on the point about whether this is an elite preoccupation or not, I think it's actually at the core of the matter because it strikes me that what Trump tried to do and what this conviction is about, what he tried to do in 2020 as well as 2016 was to nullify the votes of an election, and therefore, of the people, the masses votes, not the individuals. Remember that millions and millions more Americans voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and by the way, millions more voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. And that is not an elite thing, but in fact, it is an attempt-
Ian Bremmer:
No, that's just the electoral system, yeah.
Susan Glasser:
But it's not just the electoral system. You're dismissing January 6th as sort of, I'm not sure what, but this was a direct effort to seek to stop the certification of the people's votes, both the millions of Americans who voted more for Biden than Trump, and also in the states, Biden's victory.
And what we came away from interviewing more than 300 officials, most of them Republican political appointees of Donald Trump in Trump's White House, was a very strong conclusion, more than I expected by the way when we started the book, Ian, that it wasn't about the solidity of the institutions or the idea that democracy held. It's that they were much more vulnerable and fragile, and that after the 2020 election, we were much closer than we thought we would be because it wasn't the institutions, it was one individual. We were one attorney general, one acting attorney general, one vice president, one chairman of the joint chiefs away from what would have been a coup on the constitutional order.
I don't know why it is that people find it too hard to remember that occurred only not even four years ago, but that is literally like an unthinkable thing. And having crossed that Rubicon, I think that the idea that we're just treating this as a normal election between two warring tribes with different ideologies is really, that's what history is going to remember about this moment, unfortunately.
Ian Bremmer:
I guess my broader point as someone who spends more time thinking about issues around the world than inside the United States is that this does feel like it is an election that in a properly functioning democracy, the issue that you've both just brought up should be the most important one. I mean, if the country itself, if its institutions, if the ability to hold a free and fair election and a transfer of power that is respected by the population is in question, that should be the most important thing. That happened in Brazil, for example, and the perpetrators are not allowed to run again as opposed to the United States.
I mean, Brazil, a middle-income economy that the Americans don't think about very much, turns out in some ways to have more resilient political institutions in response to this kind of threat than our own United States does. Perhaps that's the issue that I'm trying to get at and trying to understand how worried you think we should be about that.
Preet Bharara:
We've grown accustomed to the luxury of repeated, peaceful transfers of power. Things always work out for the United States of America. We're the greatest country in the world and have been for a very long time. The greatest country ever for a lot of reasons, notwithstanding the crises we find ourselves plunged into now.
And so there's a tendency on the part of some people, I think, when other people ring the bell and worry that you're overreacting. And my concern is that the rest of the folks are underreacting, and it's impossible. There is nothing that guarantees in the rule of law and the world order or by God's grace, if you believe in that, that just because the United States has been a great democracy, it will persist in being democratic. And just because we haven't before elected someone like Donald Trump, a deceitful populist who likes to pit people against each other, he's a different order of person, and I think that people are underestimating the pain and damage that will be caused to the country if he's re-elected.
And a part of that is because of perpetual American optimism I think that things always work out. We get into a recession, we get into a depression, we work our way out of it. The world is plunged into war. America comes to the rescue. America always is resilient and resolves to fix itself. And I just don't know that that faith is as well-placed as it used to be.
Ian Bremmer:
Susan, last word to you.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah. I mean, this is a powerful conversation, Ian, and I think your point about Brazil is a very important one. We may have a history that marks us as different than all the other countries in the world, but at the same time, I think the events of the last eight years have shown pretty clearly that we might not be as exceptional as we think we are. It's not an accident that there have been these kind of rise of far-right populism in so many countries around the world over the last few years.
There's a pretty clear playbook that shows that Trump is running down the checklist of a would-be authoritarian. And that's the context in which I think we should view things like the attack on the jury's verdict in the trial. And by the way, I don't think we know the answer yet. I don't think we know the outcome yet.
And I remember the words of the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, when he was asked, "What's the election going to be about?" And he said, "It's going to be two things. It's going to be democracy and Dobbs." That's the Supreme Court ruling throwing out Roe versus Wade. There's a strong chance that he's correct about that.
Ian Bremmer:
Well, that's what he wants it to be about certainly. There's no question.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.
Ian Bremmer:
Susan Glasser, Preet Bharara, thanks so much for joining to me. Thanks for having us.
Susan Glasser:
Thanks. That was great.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars. Otherwise, don't do it. On Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.
- Biden vs Trump foreign policy: Political scientist Stephen Walt weighs in ›
- Preet Bharara on the legal troubles of former President Trump ›
- Trump has been found guilty. Will voters care? ›
- What the Trump trial circus is missing ›
- Donald Trump is a convicted felon ›
- Ian Bremmer on Trump's guilty verdict ›
- Will foreign policy decide the 2024 US election? ›
Trump in handcuffs.
Trump's guilty verdict is a historic first, but will it matter?
You knew it, I knew it, everybody knew it. But now it’s on the record: Donald Trump is officially a crook.
Last Thursday, after two days of deliberations, a jury of his peers unanimously found the former president and 2024 Republican presumptive nominee guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the hush money criminal case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Bragg charged Trump with cooking the books to hide a $130,000 payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels – with whom he’d allegedly had an affair – from voters during the 2016 election campaign by disguising it as legal fees to his then-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Falsifying business records is normally a misdemeanor, but Bragg, an elected Democrat in deep-blue Manhattan, had campaigned on putting Trump in cuffs. To upgrade the charges to felonies, he drew on a controversial legal theory to claim that the records were falsified in an attempt to commit or conceal an underlying federal crime of the jury’s choice. Judging by the outcome, the gambit worked – although it also helped further politicize and delegitimize the case and could make the conviction vulnerable to reversal on appeal.
The verdict marks a watershed moment for American democracy. Trump is the first-ever former American president convicted of a crime. He is also the first major-party candidate to run for the White House as a felon. Of course, these are far from the only unprecedented things happening in the US political system. From Trump’s two impeachments and acquittals to chronic Congressional gridlock to recurring House Speaker succession drama to the Jan. 6 insurrection, we’re living through an era of exceptional yet increasingly normalized political dysfunction that is fraying our social fabric and eroding the legitimacy of our democracy. At some point, something’s going to break, and it’s not going to be pretty.
The legal consequences for Trump will be minimal. He will appeal his conviction. This will probably take years to resolve, and it may well succeed given the dubious legal theory used to prosecute him.
But before an appeal can be filed, Judge Juan Merchan is set to decide on sentencing on July 11. While each count carries a maximum of 4 years in prison, even a single day in jail is probably not in the cards for a first-time nonviolent offender like him, with house arrest or small fines more likely punishments. And even if he were sentenced to prison, he would not be remanded until the last of his appeals were exhausted, which would not happen until well after the election.
Notably, the New York trial was by far the weakest and least serious of all the criminal cases Trump faced. The three that remain – the Fulton County election interference case, the federal election interference case, and the federal classified documents case – are orders of magnitude more consequential, but none is expected to start before September if at all this year. Should he win in November, he won’t be able to pardon himself of the New York convictions, but he will be able to quash the two federal indictments and at least postpone the Georgia trial until he’s out of office.
Odds are that the 34 guilty verdicts will be the only legal accountability Trump will see before the election – and perhaps ever.
What about the impact on the election itself? First things first: The conviction won’t affect Trump’s ability to run for or serve as president, even on the off chance that he was put behind bars. Nor will it stop him from voting (for himself), unless he is incarcerated by Election Day. But will it make it less likely that Trump wins in November? Probably, but only just a little.
The reason it might dent Trump’s chances at the margin is that a non-negligible share of independent voters had consistently said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he was convicted of a crime. And presidential elections in our highly polarized country are increasingly decided by a few tens of thousands of them in a handful of states. Even small losses among this group can end up being pivotal.
That said, there are reasons why this may not end up mattering much.
First, the election is still five months away. Think about all that can happen between now and then. If the first half of the year is anything to go by, I suspect the 34 guilty verdicts are going to feel like a distant memory by the time voters go to the ballot.
Second, the conviction will rally Republicans around Trump and mobilize Democrats to some extent (i.e., partisans are gonna partisan), but the number of undecided voters among whom this particular issue will actually move the needle in November is small. Most Americans are more focused on pocketbook issues, immigration, abortion, and President Joe Biden’s age than on Trump’s legal issues or the threat he poses to US democracy. This is true today and will likely be true in November.
Third, independents who were open to voting for Trump before last Thursday will probably learn to grow comfortable with a criminal conviction the same way they got over the Access Hollywood tape, the Stormy Daniels affair, the Charlottesville rally, and the “Stop the Steal” movement. If these Trump-leaning voters were willing to forgive so many sordid transgressions, there’s little reason to believe a guilty verdict on trumped-up white-collar charges is going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Although the guilty verdicts are bad news for the former president, this remains a very close race that Trump is still slightly favored to win against a historically unpopular incumbent. But in a game of inches, any headwinds could be enough to make a difference.
Ian Bremmer on Trump's guilty verdict
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take on another historic day for the US political system.
Donald Trump, former president, running for president, guilty from a jury of his peers on all 34 charges in this New York case. It is an extraordinary day. The United States has never in history had an American president convicted of a felony before. There are, of course, lots of unprecedented things that happen in the US political system, right now. Trump's dual impeachments, both of which led to acquittals, the challenges of the Supreme Court, the speaker of the House, I mean, you name it right now, January 6th, America's doing it. And this is, should not be normalized. And yet, American citizens increasingly come to expect the unexpected from their political system.
This case is, the structurally weakest in the sense it's the least significant crimes that he has been accused of, that he's been indicted for, across the country. We look at, the cases of the mishandling and lying about classified information or, the Georgia efforts to overturn the election or, of course, the January 6th related cases. Those are much more serious in terms of impact on the US political system and the role of Donald Trump as president. But this is the case, that has moved the fastest. And this is the case that has now returned the convictions.
Let's look at the case itself for a moment. The verdict and even the potential jail time that comes from it will have no impact on Trump's ability to run for or to serve as president, should he win. Though it's also true that he cannot pardon himself because they're state charges. They aren't federal charges. So, if he wins, he's still a convicted felon, but he's also president again. And yes, he can still vote. Everyone saying no, he can't vote because Florida says felons can't vote. Yes, but that's if the felony is in Florida. If the felony is someplace else, in New York, and he's not actually in jail, then Florida has a type of reciprocity so that he, that the rules of New York apply, so he can vote for himself. And I'm sure he's going to.
On the legal front, the implications for Trump are pretty small. Prison time is pretty unlikely. Even if they're imposed, they'd be very short. Fines will be small, and Trump is also almost certainly going to appeal this guilty verdict through the New York court system and potentially eventually to the Supreme Court, which is going to take months. that you don't necessarily have given the upcoming election. And during that time, sentencing is likely to be postponed. And the focus of the appeal is going to be on the decision of the prosecution, which was quite controversial and seen to be politicized, to upgrade the charges from misdemeanors to felonies based on the legal theory that the fraud that Trump committed, were attempted violations of a federal law. So, that's the case itself.
What about the election? Does it now make it less likely that Trump wins? Maybe. I might even say probably, but only a little. First point, we are still six months away from this election. That is a very long time. The entire UK election is like six weeks from when they declare it to when it happens. The United States and all of America's collective wisdom, the most expensive, the biggest spectacle, and this is going on and on and on. And I suspect that a lot of what's happening today will feel like history by the time we actually get to November. Now, having said that, independents have consistently said over the past months that they will be less likely to vote for Trump if he is convicted. A lot of them say that, and there are a lot of independents. Fewer people are actually registered as Republicans or Democrats in today's United States. The GOP is very likely to continue to vote for him. In fact, many, I think, will be more strong in their conviction to support Trump because they feel that this is a witch hunt. Now, I do think that there are centrist Republicans that are not comfortable with a lot of who Trump is, but because pretty much every leader of the Republican Party, the governors, the senators, the members of the House, have all lined up behind Trump with loyalty, his coattail effect is probably going to be significant to the voters.
And, you know, Nikki Haley, who continues to poll about like 20%, even though she's already withdrawn, she has come out and said, “I'm supporting Trump. I can't support Biden, I got to support Trump.” Why? Because, she wants to be secretary of state, and her personal ambition matters a lot more to her than whether or not she sees Trump as unfit. And the impact that that's going to have on the election in Trump's favor, I think, is significant. I think she was in a position to make a difference. And she did, for herself. And that is part of the reason why US democracy is in crisis, is because so many political leaders for so long have been making decisions just like that. And that's not just the Republicans. That's the Democrats, too.
Now, I still think Trump can absolutely win again. This is a close race. It's going to be decided in a small number of states. Most Americans have said that what matters to them is not the state of American democracy. What matters to them is abortion, and immigration, and the economy, and inflation. And I suspect that that is still going to be true two months from now, four months from now, six months from now. And that, you know, as much as people were up in arms about the “stop the steal” movement, after January 6th, or as much as they were up in arms about the Access Hollywood tapes when Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, they quickly forgot about it. And I suspect that, you know, this is more significant, but still, ultimately, most Americans are going to continue to vote for what they say has been most important to them. And that's not the state of American democracy.
Again, a big reason why US democracy is in crisis. But perhaps the most important point here is justice needs to be done in the United States. It also needs to be seen to be done. And in the US today, the level of division, the level of mistrust, the level of suspicion among America and citizens means that almost every Trump supporter believes that justice has not been done, that this was a witch hunt, that this was trumped up charges and fake, driven by President Biden himself, to ensure that Trump cannot be president again. That is certainly the belief of a large number of Trump supporters and Trump and his advisers and his campaign, leaders will do everything they can to promote that narrative. And that is incredibly dangerous for a democracy. That is an indication that US democracy is in deep crisis in a way that is much, much more structurally challenging than in any other advanced democracy today. You could not say that about Canada, or Japan, or the United Kingdom, or Germany, or even France, or Italy. It is the United States uniquely among wealthy democracies, that has a political system that large numbers of its people, its own citizens, no longer believe in and don't know what it stands for, don't think it's legitimate.
And that, with two deeply unpopular candidates who stand for radically different visions of the world and the United States is a very, very dangerous place to be. And I think that whoever you're rooting for, whoever you're voting for, the strength of the US political system today is in question. And around the world, those of you that are watching this that aren't Americans, you know, your views of the United States, your willingness to believe in the US and believe in the commitments that the Americans make over time, are being deeply challenged, are being shaken by what you see in the US today, and what you're going to see over the coming months.
I certainly hope that we don't see significant political violence on the back of this, though I think it's certainly possible, and the likelihood of that as the election gets closer is growing. And I certainly hope that the United States is able to run a free and fair election, but it also has to be seen to be free and fair. And there, I don't think that is likely at all, come November. And as an American who considers himself a patriot and believes in my country, I'm deeply concerned and saddened about that. That's not going to make me stop working. It's not going to quiet my voice. It's not going to reduce what I'm saying to all of you out there. But I have to be honest about what I see, and that's where we are.
So, anyway, some thoughts for today. I hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- The Supreme Court throws Trump a bone ›
- Jane Harman: Trump trial a distraction away from urgent global crises ›
- Trump turns trial into campaign rally ›
- What the Trump trial circus is missing ›
- Trump trial: How would a conviction hurt his reelection bid? ›
- The US is the world's most dysfunctional major democracy - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: Will Trump's criminal conviction ruin his campaign - or American democracy? - GZERO Media ›