New polling from Morning Consult, which was spotlighted by the news organization Axios, found a majority of registered voters (54 percent, to be specific) approving to some degree of the recent guilty verdict at Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York City. Only 34 percent disapproved.
Trump was accused of dozens of felony counts of falsifying business records, and the jury, after just a couple of days of deliberations, found him guilty on all counts.
Next on the horizon are looming appeals and a sentencing, at some point, for Trump. Speaking on MSNBC, former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg argued that there was legal precedent for Trump to not get any jail-time following the conviction but that there were aggravating factors that might make the outcome worse for the ex-president, like his incessant, public targeting of the judge in the case. That judge, Juan Merchan, did impose a gag order on Trump, but it targeted potential comments about jurors, witnesses, and others — excluding the judge.
Merchan already expressed openness to the possibility of jailing Trump in the context of that gag order, threatening the ex-president with the potential consequence in the event of further violations. Trump was already found in contempt ten times, with nine of the violations established in one fell swoop (meaning it’s not as though Trump evaded more serious consequences on ten separate occasions, as many alleged breaches were considered together as proceedings marched forward).
The Trump campaign claimed extensive fundraising in the wake of the verdict, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to win in his incoming rematch in 2024 with incumbent President Joe Biden. Biden himself has already seen plenty of fundraising spikes, and the portrait from national polling in the race remains mixed.
