The more things change – a U.S. president convicted of a felony offense for the first time ever – the more they stay the same – Donald “Trump calls trial a ‘scam,’ vows to appeal historic verdict.” 

The verdict in New York yesterday was historic: not only for being the first time an American president or former president was found guilty of having committed a felony, but for the American system of justice demonstrating that any American citizen can be held to account before a jury of his or her peers.  In spite of that citizen’s rank in society, or his attempts to undermine the system itself by waging “an all-out war against the judicial system before the verdict came in, hoping to blunt the political damage and position him[self] as a martyr.”

But amid the relentless offensive by Trump and his allies on the legal infrastructure holding him accountable, the trial came with a substantial cost, according to those who study democracy, with the ultimate impact likely to be measured in November.

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“The judicial system has taken a body blow from Trump’s assaults,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies the rise and fall of constitutional government. Forcing him to sit through the trial, follow orders and listen to evidence against himself meant that “his rage at being controlled by others is going to be directed at trying to bring the whole judicial system down with him.”

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But there was something different about Trump’s repeated complaints about this first criminal jury trial that made them even more potent, experts say. Whenever a politician is brought up on charges, “every single time that leader will scream up and down that this is a politicized process and his political enemies are out to get him,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University. “What’s notable here,” said Levitsky, co-author of the book “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” “is that the entire Republican Party is marching in lockstep, along with right-wing media, claiming that the legal process has been weaponized, and therefore eroding public trust in a really vital institution.”

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“The problem is that not even the best institutions in the world can function well in the context of extreme polarization, particularly when one party has turned against democratic institutions. And so extreme polarization and extreme radicalization will undermine and destroy even the best of institutions. And that’s what we’re seeing in the United States.” But even if Trump damaged the judicial system’s reputation through his complaints about the trial, to not prosecute “when there’s a strong sense that wrongdoing happened,” Levitsky said, would be more damaging. “That would hold the judicial system and the political system hostage to say that to prosecute will bring more blowback than benefit. If you give in to that, you have no rule of law.”

Did this trial and all the sideshows related to it diminish the American judicial process?  We can each answer that for ourselves.  I think not, and I don’t think it has for the many many millions of Americans who don’t take every childish taunt out of Trump’s mouth as gospel truth.  He was obviously trying to pre-rouse his supporters to doubt and reject any verdict against him, in the same way he tries to get them to believe that any election he loses had to have been rigged; the unfortunate thing is that it appears to work for many many millions of other Americans.  He promised a “news conference” this morning, and it was filled with more of the same lies as came before.  And, he took no questions…which to my mind makes this a campaign speech rather than a news conference.  Trump is not famous for engaging in a vigorous exchange of viewpoints.

(What he is famous for, among some, is being a TV star, and this morning I discovered an article in the Washington Post with some terrific background about that show.  It cites a recent essay in Slate by one of the producers on that show – who has just been released from a non-disclosure agreement and is free to talk about what he witnessed – and Bill “Pruitt describes choices about scripts and editing and challenges as efforts to present a particular, inaccurate image: the show’s star, Donald Trump, as an omniscient business leader. Looking back across the decades since the first season of the show was filmed, Pruitt clearly regrets having helped foster that perception.”  It’s worth your time to read.)

Trump says he will appeal the verdicts and that is certainly his right, but don’t expect that to bring a conclusion to the legal fight any time soon.  Trump is famously litigious when it comes to civil matters that are at bottom just about money; potential appeals in this case – to the trial judge, two levels of state appeals courts and (yes, possibly) the Supreme Court of the United States could take years to conclude.  Not that it matters, though: Trump, the convicted felon, is still allowed by law to run for president and to serve if he is elected.  And the first reaction to the conviction from among MAGA Nation was to shower him with tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions!

Does this conviction change the course of the presidential election?  No one knows yet, including the talking heads who are acting like they do know.  It seems plain that those who are brainwashed in the MAGA cult either don’t believe he did anything wrong or don’t care what he did, or think this whole thing is more evidence of the anti-Trump Deep State at work.  Those who were never going to vote for Trump before didn’t need this conviction to sway them.  For the rest, this might be what it finally takes for some Trump supporters to change their minds and some undecideds to choose a side.  It sure seems like it should matter, to everyone.  It wasn’t so long ago, I think, that it would have.