There is no denying that the conviction of former President Donald Trump was an electoral ploy by Democrats achieved by manipulating the law to target the GOP nominee. There is also no denying that Trump and the GOP did a fair share of this damage to themselves.
To get all of the stipulations out of the way, Trump was targeted for being the GOP nominee (or GOP front-runner, back when charges were first brought). As even CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig wrote, “no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever.” And Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case, has twisted the justice system for his political goals at the expense of the safety of New Yorkers.
That all being said, Trump would not have been the target of a twisted prosecution over hush money payments to a porn star for an alleged affair if he did not pay hush money to a porn star for an alleged affair. Even if Trump is telling the truth about not having sexual relations with Stormy Daniels (and let’s be honest, that is a big “if”), he cultivated for himself the image of being a playboy through a history of alleged and real affairs. It is a debate that is considered settled among Republicans, but it remains the case that Trump’s personal life is full of moral failings that should have stopped him from advancing in the GOP in the first place.
If Republicans wanted to avoid having their nominee go into an election as a “convicted felon,” they could have simply chosen not to nominate someone against whom it was obvious Democrats would have plenty of opportunities to scrounge up charges. How about this: This was obvious even back when Trump was first charged in 2023, which led to a surge in support because Republican voters thought the only way to help Trump was to nominate him. That was also exactly what Democrats were hoping for, given that Trump was the only candidate Biden could actually beat.
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And yes, to beat the dead horse that has already decayed to nothing but bones, this was obvious when Trump and his litany of moral failings came down the escalator in 2015. That ship sailed long ago, but the lessons should still be reiterated.
We would not be here without Democratic abuses of power and shattering of societal, legal, and political norms. But we also wouldn’t be here if Trump hadn’t put himself in this situation, nor would we be here if Republicans were more serious about winning with higher-quality candidates than they have been for the past decade. The ripples of the 2016 election cycle continue on, and the effects on the GOP can’t be swept under the rug just because those effects also sent the Democratic Party over the edge.