After his recent criminal conviction on all counts at a New York City trial on felony accusations of falsifying business records, former President Donald Trump is sticking with his campaign for president, amid which he is expected to formally become Republicans’ presidential nominee for the year in proceedings next month.
Much of the Republican Party, including at the grassroots level and among elected figures, is sticking by Trump after his conviction, helping ensure that he is, in fact, still on his way to the nomination.
“Trump should drop out,” said longtime political operative Josh Schwerin in a Tuesday post to X (formerly called Twitter). “Reporters should be regularly asking him and his campaign if he’s going to drop out.”
The prospect has come up, though there is certainly no sign that Trump and his campaign harbor any intentions of taking that path. Trump is expected to arrive at a rematch with incumbent President Joe Biden later this year, as although both major parties’ primaries were technically continuing, Trump and Biden both secured the necessary support to be the Republican and Democratic nominees, respectively, awhile ago.
Trump’s sentencing after the New York conviction is apparently set for next month, and one of the major questions ahead of that point is whether the former president will end up with any time in detention. One expert, former federal prosecutor Chuck Rosenberg, recently suggested that there were factors supporting both possibilities here, including the public antagonism from Trump towards the judge potentially working against the former president in this context, as the defendant’s sentiments could be a sentencing factor.
For now, no matter the predictable complaints, the Biden campaign is leaning strongly into referring to Trump as a convicted felon following the unfortunate-for-Trump outcome of the New York trial, which only concluded last week.
