USA faces a ‘powder keg’ election in wake of Donald Trump conviction

Bragg, of course, is the first-term ­Manhattan Democratic District ­Attorney (DA) who despite the case ­being ­abandoned by his predecessor and ­federal prosecutors, brought the “hush money” indictment to court that resulted last Thursday in the historic first ­conviction of a former US president – Donald Trump. 

While some Americans – like the ­anonymous message writer on Fifth ­Avenue – felt that justice had been done, others who believe Trump can do no wrong and enraged by the verdict, ­flooded pro-Trump websites with calls for riots, revolution and violent retribution.

It took a jury two days to find Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying records in the first degree, vindicating what some argued was Bragg’s high-risk strategy of prosecuting the case.

As early as last December in an ­interview with public radio station WNYC, Bragg made clear the importance in his view of seeing the case for what it truly was.

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“The core is not money for sex ... it’s about conspiring to corrupt a ­presidential election,” Bragg insisted, expressing a view shared by many, even if they might have been reluctant to openly say so.

Since Thursday’s unanimous verdict, every imaginable superlative has been used to describe the outcome of the trial and there’s no doubt that this is indeed “uncharted territory” as far as Trump’s conviction is concerned as well as its ­potential impact on November’s ­presidential contest. 

If one thing is certain though, it’s that the verdict will compound what is an ­already deeply divided America, ­setting the scene for an even more bitter ­presidential election than anyone could have imagined. 

The extent of just how bitter that ­division is – and its capacity for a violent backlash as November’s ballot nears – was disturbingly evident among the ­comments on three Trump-aligned websites ­reviewed by the Reuters news agency in the wake of the verdict.

Among these was the former president’s own Truth Social platform, Patriots.Win and the Gateway Pundit. Across these websites, some Trump supporters called for attacks on jurors, the execution of the judge in the hush money trial, Justice Juan Merchan, or outright civil war and armed insurrection.

“Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one commentator on Patriots.Win. “Hopefully he gets met with illegals with a machete,” the post said in reference to illegal immigrants.

On Gateway Pundit, one poster ­suggested shooting liberals after the ­verdict. “Time to start capping some leftys,” said the post. “This cannot be fixed by voting.”

Such messages are an uncomfortable reminder of the threats of violence and intimidating rhetoric that soared after Trump lost the 2020 election and falsely claimed the vote was stolen. All that of course was to culminate in the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol building in the wake of Trump’s defeat and Joe Biden’s election to the White House. 

Now, as the two men look set to face off again in November’s vote there is a palpable sense of unease among many Americans as to what might unfold after last Thursday’s conviction of Trump. 

The former president only added fuel to the fire on Friday when in a long ­rambling press conference, he baselessly cast the judges and prosecutors in his trials as ­corrupt tools of the Biden administration, intent on sabotaging his presidential bid. 

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As Washington-based The Atlantic magazine observed, Trump’s post-verdict verbal rampage on Friday, was a “preview of the peril to come”. His unrestrained ­remarks, said the magazine, “offered a rhetorical hint at the extremism to come” in the remaining five months of this year’s presidential election, for which he is once again the presumptive Republican ­nominee.

“You saw what happened to some of the witnesses that were on our side,” Trump said in the conference, occasionally ­looking at notes but clearly extemporising most of the time.

“They were literally crucified by this man who looks like an angel, but he is ­really a devil.” Trump deemed the judge in the case, Merchan, a “tyrant”, called his trial “ridiculous”, and lamented that Merchan could lock him away for 187 years – even though it remains uncertain whether Trump will serve any jail time at all.

As The Atlantic noted, “I am your ­retribution”, which was again reiterated on Friday, has been the 2024 Trump ­campaign’s central theme, but in this ­occasion, it was clearer than ever that ­anyone who fails to fall into line behind the former president is considered an ­enemy.

In his monologue, Trump was, as ever, more than willing to make ­unsubstantiated claims and many of his points were subjected to fact-checking by various media organisations. 

He repeated, for example, his familiar claim that while Manhattan prosecutors have been focusing on him, New York City has been experiencing record-high violent crime.

“You have violent crime all over this city at levels that nobody’s ever seen ­before,” he said, though – as subsequent fact -checking by media groups showed – this is not even close to true. 

Violent crime in New York City, and in Manhattan in particular, has ­plummeted since the early 1990s and is today ­nowhere near record levels.

Trump also repeated his frequent claim that the Manhattan case in which he was convicted “is all done by Biden and his people” and “in total conjunction with the White House and the DOJ”, the ­federal Department of Justice. Again, fact-checking showed there is no basis for Trump’s claim. 

There is no evidence that Biden, his White House aides or the federal ­Justice Department had any role in ­launching or running Manhattan District ­Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution – and Bragg, a Democrat, is a locally elected ­official who does not report to the federal ­government. As CNN pointed out, the ­indictment in the case was approved by a grand jury of ordinary citizens.

On everything from his Manhattan trial to immigration to tax policy to his claim that America is a “fascist state” ­under Biden, Trump’s monologue on Friday was one false claim after another.

None of this of course will matter to Trump loyalists and will only serve to ­further entrench their position in ­supporting him and doubling down in their antagonism toward his opponents and critics. 

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That much was evident on pro-Trump websites monitored by Reuters. On ­various platforms, many of his supporters claimed that his conviction was proof that the American political system was broken and that only violent action could save the country.

“One million men (armed) need to go to Washington and hang everyone. That’s the only solution,” said one poster on Patriots.Win. Another added: “Trump should already know he has an army ­willing to fight and die for him if he says the words … I’ll take up arms if he asks.”

Other posts specifically urged ­targeting Democrats, in some cases ­suggesting they be shot. “AMERICA FULLY ­DESTROYED BY DEMOCRATS. LOCK AND LOAD,” wrote a commentator on Gateway Pundit.

According to Jacob Ware, a co-author of the book God, Guns, And Sedition: ­Far-Right Terrorism In America, who spoke to Reuters in response to their ­review of the websites, some of the ­violent language used by Trump’s ­followers was a testament to the former president’s ­“ironclad ability to mobilise more ­extreme supporters to action, both at the ballot box and through violence”.

“Until and unless he accepts the ­process, the extremist reaction to his ­legal troubles will be militant,” said Ware, a ­research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

A spokesperson for Trump’s own Truth Social website also responded to the Reuters review, unequivocally dismissing its publication. 

“It’s hard to believe that Reuters – once a respected news service – has fallen so low as to publish such a manipulative, false, defamatory and transparently ­stupid ­article as this one purely out of political spite,” argued the Truth Social ­spokesperson.

All three sites have policies against ­violent language, and some of the posts were later removed, Reuters confirmed. 

While the views expressed on such websites might be ­rep­resentative of the more extreme among the ranks of Trump’s supporters, they do not necessarily reflect the position of those vast majority of Americans who back him and still remain willing to give Trump their vote.  

As polls show, Trump retains ­widespread support and according to his campaign team, they have shattered their own fundraising record after his felony conviction on Thursday.

Jason Thielman, who runs the official Senate Republican campaign arm, said his group had “its largest online daily ­fundraising haul” of the 2024 election cycle. He wrote on Twitter/X: “Outrage over the sham verdict against Trump has spurred average Americans into action!”

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But this spurring into action could be said about both Republicans and ­Democrats, say some senior American commentators, who also point to how polarised politics in the country has ­become – and to a volatile degree.

Writing in the Wall Street ­Journal (WSJ) last week in the wake of Trump’s ­conviction, Pulitzer Prize-winning ­columnist Peggy Noonan warned that while America has long been ­divided, it’s almost as if many are ­beginning to “enjoy” the political polarisation and sense of estrangement.

“We talk in our country about ­political polarisation and it’s real – we’re split into 1000 pieces within two big camps of left and right. We decry the harshness of our political discourse, ­particularly ­online, where outrageous and ­dehumanising things are said,” ­observed Noonan.

“When was the last time you saw ­anyone try to address the other side with respect and understanding …?

“Instead we accuse each other and put each other down and it doesn’t feel merry and high-spirited, like political business as usual, it feels cold,” Noonan added, tapping into and reflecting the mood felt by so many Americans as the country ­faces the coming election. 

Following Trump’s conviction, many are of the view that it is has done more to help than hurt his chances of ­winning back the White House. Even some ­Democrats, glad as they are to see Trump at last ­being held accountable, would ­admit that as the insurrection of ­January 6, 2021 ought to have made clear, a ­greater hazard lies ahead to the rule of law and the country’s democracy than any fraudulent bookkeeping. 

While some wavering voters may now be swayed against Trump, the ­constitution does not bar a convicted felon from ­running for president, and the verdict so far has done nothing to remove the grave threat he poses to the American republic. Acutely aware of his lingering threat, the Biden/Harris campaign team made that position clear in a statement last Thursday.

“Donald Trump has always ­mistakenly believed he would never face ­consequences for breaking the law for his own personal gain,” the statement said.

“But today’s verdict does not change the fact that the American people face a ­simple reality. There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval ­Office – at the ballot box.”

For the moment, the stakes just got even higher and as of last Thursday, America is more fractured than ever, perhaps indeed even dangerously so. 

“It feels to me as if America is sitting on a powder keg and the fuse has been lit,” said Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and ­Governance at the University of ­Minnesota, speaking to The Guardian newspaper in December last year.

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“The protective shield that all ­democracies and social orders rely on – ­legitimacy of the governing body, some level of elite responsibility, the ­willingness of citizens to view their neighbours in a civic way – is in an advanced stage of ­decline or collapse.

“It’s quite possible that the powder keg that America’s sitting on will explode over the course of 2024,” was Jacobs’s ­conclusion. Though his comments were made last year, last week’s events suggest the country took one step closer to such a perilous place.

Just to be clear, right now there is no imminent threat of armies clashing on the battlefield or a scenario such as is depicted in current dystopian movie blockbuster Civil War.

But only the blinkered could fail to recognise that the US is now more split along ideological and political lines than at any time since the 1850s and that in itself represents a powder keg. Trump’s speech on Friday might have been full of falsehoods and factual inaccuracies, but on one thing he was arguably right. 

November 5 could well be the most important day in the history of the country.