Disgust with a perceived miscarriage of justice outraged millions and led tens of thousands to power the campaign forward.
Trump's conviction inspiring a lot of people to vote for him: Theresa Albano
Voters Theresa Albano, Bernadette Wright and Andrew McDonald discuss the potential impact of NY v. Trump guilty verdict on the presidential election on 'The Story.'
If you aren’t stunned by the $70 million+ in "small dollar" campaign contributions to the campaign of former President Donald Trump that were made in the first 72 hours after the verdicts in his Manhattan trial, then you don’t know much about politics, because nothing like this sort of fundraising weekend has ever happened before.
Skeptical about the relative scale of this Krakatoa of contributions? Don’t believe me. Believe the Democrats. Here’s the first paragraph from a March 2024 Washington Post report on the "three presidents" gala at Radio City Music Hall: "In a show of force his campaign is calling the ‘most successful political fundraiser in American history,’ President Biden raised more than $25 million during a New York event Thursday featuring former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton."
According to Eric Trump, who appeared this past weekend on "Sunday Morning Futures Maria Bartiromo," the record-setting flood of small dollar donations was accompanied by big donations which, when included with the small donors, totaled over $200 million in donations to the Trump campaign in the three days following the verdicts.
What that mountain of new money tells us is that the verdicts constituted a "last straw" for hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters, old and new. Enormous numbers of ordinary Americans were disgusted enough with the verdicts to send Trump money to press forward with his campaign.
Why? There are as many motives as there are donors, but having spoken with a dozen contributors —mostly new donors— on my radio show Monday, their responses confirmed for me my hunch that the general feeling at large in at least half the country is that the New York trial and convictions were yet another abuse of power done in order to "get Trump." Another abuse of power in a long-running drama that became, for them, the proverbial "last straw."
Want a list of the previous straws? Forgive the shorthand, but a column has limits and most folks will instantly recall what these short notations mean. Paul Simon once recorded a hit song "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover." Here are 50 reasons why people may have reached a new level of disgust late Thursday afternoon through Sunday morning and contributed to the various campaign websites. Each of these "straws" brings consciously to mind a discrete abuse of power since Trump came down the escalator in 2015, and the eruption of the contributions volcano is evidence that the outrage is real and widespread:
1. Hillary’s private server, the rules it violated and the threat to national security it posed, and no prosecution for it.
2. Hillary’s lawyers’ deletion of half of her emails and no prosecution for that.
3. Hillary’s use of Bleach Bit and hammers and again no prosecution.
4. Former FBI Director James Comey’s "nothing to see here" conclusion on the Clinton emails on REP. Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
5. The Steele Dossier.
6. Marc Elias and his then law firm Perkins Coie and their roles in the 2016 campaign, which included retaining Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to "conduct the research" and create the Steele dossier.
7. The leak of the Steele dossier to Mother Jones and other media outlets
8. The meeting (ambush?) of President-elect Trump by then-CIA Director Brennan, then-FBI Director Comey and then-DNI Director Clapper at Trump Tower in January 2017, at the conclusion of which Comey briefed the president-elect on the most salacious parts of the dossier. (The news that Comey had done so almost immediately leaked.)
9. The recusal by Attorney General Jeff Sessions from any matter involving the Trump 2016 campaign.
10. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein naming Robert S. Mueller III to serve as Special Counsel to oversee the investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters.
11. The team of hyper-partisan prosecutors assembled by Mueller
12. The revelations from the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page messages about the corruption atop the FBI
13. The 22 months Mueller and his attack pack took to find…nothing.
14. The two thick volumes of "Mueller report" intended to cover the dry holes Team Mueller had drilled.
15. The refusal by Team Mueller to send to then-Attorney General William Barr a version of the report that Barr requested, a version redacted of classified information so that it could immediately be published, which the Mueller team did not do.
16. The smear of Barr that he was hiding the report and then the smear of Barr that his conclusion that there was no obstruction was somehow flawed.
17. The leak of the Trump phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky.
18. The manufacture of Impeachment One based on that call.
19. The lies of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., throughout the Mueller investigation and then throughout the impeachment.
20. The changes in voting rules because of COVID.
21. The "Zuckerbucks" and "Zuckerboxes."
22. The Commission on Presidential Debates 2020 selection of moderators and its unilateral decision to cancel one of the debates.
23. The Hunter Biden laptop and the censoring of most stories about it when the New York Post got the scoop.
24. The letter from "51 former senior intelligence officials" concluding that the emails on Biden’s laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
25. The lawlessness of the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd (and the refusal to call out that protestors were violating COVID guidelines even as churches, beaches and playgrounds were closed.)
26. The second impeachment after the 1/6 riot at the Capitol, an effort undertaken even as the transition to President Biden in two weeks would obviously prevent a timely proceeding with even minimal attention to the process due any official much less the outgoing president.
27. The set-up by the FBI of the meeting with Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (USA, ret.) and his subsequent prosecution.
28. The conduct not just of Comey, Page and Strzok but also of the Bureau’s Andrew McCabe and James Baker.
29. The manipulation of the membership of House Select Committee on 1/6 by then-Speaker Pelosi who vetoed future Indiana Senator Jim Banks from becoming the ranking minority member and proceeded to name two anti-Trump Republicans to the show trial "committee." The entire charade reflected this original breach of trust with voters, rigging the proceedings to run as they did.
30. The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.
31. The appointment of Jack Smith as Special Counsel (despite the Supreme Court having tossed his prosecution and conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell).
32. The appointment of a different Special Counsel, Robert Hur, to President Biden’s classified documents case and the obviously different standard for prosecution applied to Biden than was applied to Trump.
33. The conduct of and civil case against Trump brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
34. The conduct of New York judge Arthur Engoron during that civil proceeding, and his outrageous setting of the bond.
35. The E. Jean Carroll proceedings and verdicts.
36. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg campaigning for office on the promise of getting Trump.
37. Bragg filing an indictment against Trump resurrecting time-barred misdemeanors but without specifying in the indictment the "second crime" that turned those time-barred misdemeanors into felonies ripe for prosecution.
38. Trial court judge Juan Merchan’s symbolic contributions to the 2020 Joe Biden campaign and two hard left causes —in contravention of black letter New York law governing judicial conduct— and Merchan’s refusal to recuse himself from the Trump trial.
39. Merchan’s anti-Trump rulings on many, many issues ranging from admitting plea bargains with Michael Cohen and David Pecker that the defense objected to, to refusing to allow former Federal Elections Commission Chair Professor Brad Smith testify to the extent of his knowledge, rulings which telegraphed the judge’s push for a conviction.
40. The blistering by Merchan of defense witness Robert Costello and the judge’s interference with Costello’s testimony.
41. The failure of the judge to clearly instruct on the state of mind "the second crime" would require.
42. The jury not declaring what the "second crime" was on the verdict paper.
43. The conduct of Judge Tanya Chutkan in attempting to rush a trial in federal district court in D.C.
44. The gag order on Trump issued by trial judge Engoron in the case brought by James.
45. The gag order on Trump issued by trial Judge Chutkin in the case brought by Smith in D.C.
46. The gag order on Trump issued by Merchan.
47. The four-days-a-week of trial in the spring of the election year, a schedule requiring Trump to be in a Manhattan court room for six weeks, thus interfering with the presidential campaign
48. The conduct of both Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fanni Willis and her lover and co-counsel Nathan Wade.
49. The refusal of all of these prosecutors and judges to wait on the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity from criminal proceedings based on acts taken while president.
50. Arizona’s Democratic State Attorney General Kris Mayes’ and her grand jury’s indictment of 18 people in an election interference case filed in late April.
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There is much more, such as the Colorado and Maine efforts to toss Trump off the ballot, but the Supreme Court acted with dispatch and ruled correctly on those specific abuses of power, so while they are part of the mosaic of abuses of law and process, they have at least been resolved finally and fully (and in Trump’s favor).
To all of the above, add the legacy media’s deep and never-ending bias in coverage of each of the listed instances as an aggravating factor in the anger felt across the country. Various Americans have different bits and pieces of this litany of perceived abuses of power stored in their memory banks. When the jury quickly voted to convict, it appears various combinations of the concerns that have accumulated since 2015 unleashed an outpouring of support for the former president in the only way these contributors knew how to signal —in the same fashion Merchan signaled he was with Biden and against Trump: With a small indeed symbolic donation to to the various campaign websites.
Everyone with a functioning brain should know what Merchan was signaling with his illegal contributions. Everyone who can figure that out can also figure out what this cash avalanche into Trump’s coffers means. And if Merchan sentences Trump to jail time —as I fully expect he will because I don’t think his case of Trump Derangement Syndrome has fully run its course yet— another tidal wave of tens and twenties and more will hit the Trump campaign bank accounts.
Why? Because America is a country committed in hundreds of ways to fair play. Every single game played on every field or on every card table is run by rules that don’t change, or it isn’t a fair game. We don’t like cheaters, and we despise people who abuse their authority, whether at the DMV counter or during a police stop or when pursuing, to the point of ridiculous, prosecution of a former (and now I think likely) future president.
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