The British newspaper “Guardian” assessed that the stakes of the upcoming US presidential elections are particularly high for Donald Trump. If he wins, he will be the first convicted criminal to gain access to the nuclear codes. If he loses, he faces further humiliating trials and even imprisonment.
The defeat in the election for the highest office in the United States is a severe blow that no candidate will forget. For Donald Trump, this year's vote is a “judgment day”, and depending on the result, he may end up in the White House or face the threat of prison, said David Smith, head of the Guardian's Washington bureau.
The author of the comment recalled that throughout his business and television career, Trump had walked the line between ethics and law and faced countless investigations, legal battles and high fines. His private and professional life was “full of scandals on a monumental scale,” and yet he always managed to evade responsibility, Smith wrote.
“He developed a reputation as a guy who could get away with it,” said Trump biography author Gwenda Blair.
Donald TrumpPAP/EPA/SHAWN THEW
First former president convicted in a criminal case
The “Guardian” journalist mentioned in this context, among others: fraud and deceptive advertising lawsuits by Trump University, a real estate course offering company that the Republican candidate closed in 2016 with a $25 million settlement. His charitable foundation has been accused of using funds for personal and business purposes, and in February, a New York judge ordered Trump and his company to pay $350 million in damages in a civil fraud case.
According to the Washington Post's calculations, during the four years of his presidency, Trump lied or made misleading statements 30,000 times on a wide range of issues – from the number of people at his inauguration to the results of the 2020 election he lost.
In May, a jury in state court in Manhattan found the former president guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal payment for porn actress Stormy Daniels' silence about their alleged sexual relationship. Trump became the first former president in US history to be convicted in a criminal case. However, the case, initially described as the trial of the century, has already begun to disappear from public awareness and played an unexpectedly small role in the election campaign – said the author of the commentary.
Trump has also been charged in a number of other cases, including conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election, after which the former president's supporters stormed the Capitol. He was also charged with illegally keeping secret documents taken from the White House.
– With such a caseload, it was widely assumed that Trump would spend this election shuttling between rallies and trials. But that legal campaign never happened because, like in the past, he found ways to throw dirt into the wheels of justice and postpone the moment of reckoning, Smith said.
Trump rally in MilwaukeePAP/EPA/JEFFREY PHELPS
“For reasons I don't understand, whenever he was impeached, his polls went up.”
In his opinion, Trump also managed to turn the situation around and present the accusations against him as evidence that he is a martyr, persecuted by hidden hostile forces allegedly controlling the country. In this narrative, Democrats, not Trump, are the threat to American democracy.
– For reasons I don't understand, whenever he was accused, him polls were growing (…). Every time they bring charges against him again, he simply uses it as further evidence that he is being persecuted. It's ridiculous, but he turned it around. Like a good conman, said former Trump national security adviser John Bolton.
If Trump wins the election, he will likely use all means to suppress the ongoing proceedings against him. If he loses, his legal problems will again gather over him like dark clouds – said the author of the Guardian's commentary.
Earlier, the daily supported the candidacy of Kamala Harris in an editorial.
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