Projecting oneself as a political martyr for being dragged into legal cases is a trick that top politicians the world over often play. In some cases, it pays rich dividends while in others it does not. However, when former US President Donald Trump plays the victim card, it becomes an entirely different ball game altogether. He has successfully been using legal cases against him only to strengthen his support base further and raise even greater funds for electoral campaigns. The New York jury’s unanimous verdicts on 34 counts, according to experts, had similar results wherein Trump not only raised a few million dollars for his campaign but also garnered some support, though the task is much harder this time than before.
To keep the record straight, Trump is not only the first sitting or former US president to be prosecuted in a criminal trial, but the first to be convicted of a felony after a New York state jury returned a guilty verdict for all 34 charges in the case relating to hush money he had paid to adult movie actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump was found to have falsified business records to hide $130,000 of hush money paid to cover up a sex scandal he feared might adversely affect his run in 2016. In the case of anyone else, it would have been easily assumed that the verdict would do incalculable harm to the politician’s campaign. But, the inescapable truth is Trump is running for the White House as a convicted criminal. This seemingly does not cause any shame to Trump. On the contrary, such a sentence only spurs him on to contest the presidential poll with greater vigour.
It is no wonder that Trump’s detractors say no scandal or shame seems to cause any dip in his ratings among his core voters or Republican politicians. The trials and rulings in multiple cases against him inexplicably seem to have reinforced his aura of invulnerability to political controversy.
This trial too appears to be proving, in some ways providing grist to his mill, raising funds and enthusing his supporters. As part of his strategy to turn such reverses into gains, Trump has once again played the martyr and said: “Our whole country is being rigged right now.” He even says he will appeal against his “scam” conviction. He is still facing three more criminal cases – over the alleged mishandling of classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election. These are graver charges by far, but are not expected to be heard before election day. This makes him even bolder to go to town with his plea of innocence. All the same it shows how Trump has turned breaking the law for political advantage into a fine art.
What will happen next is anyone’s guess. The former businessman, who sought to bully his judges as soon as the verdict was announced, has long been convincing his fans that he is a victim of a plot to bring him down, hatched by a “deep state” intent on purging him if he returns to power. The Republican Party he represents has long deviated from its core principle of being “the party of law and order.” This is clear from the fact that most of his colleagues in the party do not dare condemn him for making a mockery of the rule of law.
Nonetheless, the New York trial is ample testimony to the fact that the US has a justice system that can make every citizen, no matter their standing, accountable. It has the guts to publicly dissect the behaviour of a man who had tried to make disregarding the law a virtue. Herein lies the importance of the verdict. It may not lead to any change in the stand of Trump’s hard-core supporters, but it may make the floating voters rethink about whether the country should have a felon as President.
This is something that most other democracies across the world could learn from the US. The so-called System can only be strong if the people behind it are strong, just and righteous.