Yesterday’s conviction of the Trump Organization on charges of financial impropriety, coupled with the loss by former President Donald Trump’s candidate in the Georgia Senate runoff, marked one of the worst days for Trump since
Donald Trump bedevilled by company’s conviction and Senate candidate’s defeat
In his statement after the trial ended, he wrote, “New York City is a hard place to be ‘Trump,’ as businesses and people flee our once Great City!”
The company will face a seven-figure fine, and the verdict could hinder its future endeavours. While convicting a company is not convicting a person — Trump himself was not charged in connection with the case — the taint of criminality is something that the former real estate developer and promoter has sought to avoid for decades.
Since the late 1970s, when the federal prosecutor in Brooklyn investigated Trump in a possible fraud case, he has succeeded in avoiding criminal charges. While Bragg chose not to pursue charges against Trump earlier this year, which prosecutors investigating the company had hoped to see happen, the criminal convictions represent a kind of defeat Trump has never faced.
On Tuesday night (Wednesday NZT), as the trial’s impact sank in, attention turned to Georgia. Herschel Walker, a former professional football player who was a member of the New Jersey Generals, a United States Football League team owned by Trump in the early 1980s, was waging an uphill battle in the state’s Senate runoff against incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat. In the end, Warnock prevailed in a tight election.
Trump endorsed Walker early in the campaign, even as some Republicans in Washington were squeamish about a personal history that included allegations of abuse. Yet Trump was adamant that Walker would not face consequences with voters for his history, appearing to see the athlete as living proof that the ex-president himself, who survived one scandal after another, had changed the alchemy of campaigns.
But the runoff proved otherwise. The race was close. Warnock won with overwhelming support from Black voters. Walker’s defeat, even with Trump’s history of calling any loss “rigged”, will be hard to spin away.
Taken together, the two major political and legal losses on one day underscore the new reality Trump faces as he attempts a third national campaign.
He is not the favourite of most major donors anymore; that honour is currently bestowed on Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. He is not the sole focus of conservative media; again, DeSantis is the heir. And a series of legal threats continue elsewhere.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Maggie Haberman
Photograph by: Maggie McGarvey
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