Branding Trump — And His Voters

There’s no mistaking the main intention of those who sought Donald Trump’s scalp in Manhattan. Immediately after the guilty verdict was announced, the Left was off and running with the label it so eagerly sought: “Donald Trump: Convicted Felon.” Liberals can now shout from their rooftops and coffeeshops: “Trump was unanimously convicted on 34 counts by a jury of 12!”

The Biden–Harris campaign immediately issued a statement branding Trump a “convicted felon.”

When I shared that Biden assessment with someone on Thursday, I was cleverly told that it’s “Team Brandon branding Trump.”

But there’s more to the branding. For liberals, this will be an indictment not only of Donald Trump but of anyone who dares to vote for him. They can rage: “How could you vote for a felon unanimously convicted on 34 counts by a jury of 12?!”

This will be a mighty tool to brand not only Trump but also his supporters, to deter them from voting for him.

Will it work? The label likely will scare away some Trump voters, though when alone in that booth, they can vote as they desire. But it will also energize Trump supporters and surely attract others who deem the trial an injustice against Trump. A close black colleague of mine told me last fall — when Alvin Bragg first went after Trump, and Trump’s mugshot emerged in Georgia — that these efforts would secure Trump 20 percent of the black vote, the highest for any Republican nominee since Richard Nixon. She assured me that blacks treated unjustly by the justice system would rally to Trump. When I responded incredulously, she snapped: “Look, I’m black and you’re not. I understand and you don’t.”

I’ve seen that her prognostication might be spot on. Last week Trump held a huge rally in the Bronx of all places. I was in New York City and happened to talk to a young man who attended the rally. He’s in his early 20s, white, and Jewish. I eagerly asked what the rally was like. “Super weird,” he laughed. “I never felt like such a minority as a white dude.” I told him that the photos I had seen — albeit from the corrupt left-wing media — showed mainly white people at the Bronx rally, looking like typical MAGA types. He corrected me: “No, no. Everyone around me was black or Latino.” He said the only white person he saw was a hysterical middle-aged white woman holding a sign denouncing Trump as a “Nazi.” Three black guys grabbed the sign, threw it to the ground, and start chanting, “Four more years, four more years!”

One can scarcely imagine the ideological apoplexy that this woke woman was tossed into at that moment. Did not these suffering members of the racial proletariat understand that Donald Trump is Hitler incarnate? Do they not know that he wants to put their people back in chains?

The woman no doubt hailed from other environs in New York, namely, those that Trump blasted after Thursday’s verdict. Those are areas where Trump is considered the new Führer, der Donald, the orange beast who will “destroy democracy.” Those people cheered their great victory on Thursday, believing their new branding of Trump will seal an electoral victory for Biden in November. But what they don’t realize is that 99 percent of the American land mass loathes liberal New Yorkers. That vast mass is unsurprised that an angry Manhattan jury would unanimously convict Trump on 34 counts of anything, including clubbing the corpse of his dead mother.

The American Spectator’s Bruce Bawer invoked the film 12 Angry Men, though, in this case, it was actually eight angry women and four men. The group was described by former Trump official and media figure Sebastian Gorka, who was inside the courtroom for the spectacle. Gorka counted “eight white New York women in their 30s,” one of them in a hoodie and another in a jean jacket, and remarked, “I think we know who they voted for.” They dressed “as if this were a traffic court.” As for the men, Gorka was struck that none wore a suit nor even a tie. (Click here for Gorka’s full eyewitness account.)

How they dressed, however, was utterly secondary to how they decided. Our Dan Flynn put it well in his piece aptly titled: “This is not America. It’s Manhattan.” It is indeed. And Americans know that. 

Left-wing New Yorkers hate Trump. In late April, I walked by the Trump Hotel on the Upper West Side, as I’ve done many times since Trump was elected in 2016. It’s quite a scene because there are always dozens of NYPD vehicles parked there, almost as if the Trump Hotel were another precinct for New York’s men in blue. The cops love Trump. In stark contrast, the liberals who walk by revile him. I observed one vulgarian passing by the Trump Hotel with both middle fingers hoisted into the air and shouting, “F*** you, Trump!” This idiot didn’t mind that my two youngest boys and other kids were witnessing his obscenities. When I told someone at dinner about what I witnessed, she responded, “That happens there all the time.”

And it effectively happened at that courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday.

The degree to which the guilty verdict will work for Democrats remains to be seen.

One person who thinks it will not work is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the boldly independent third-party candidate who has talked to this publication several times (click here and here) since declaring his candidacy. He knows how corrupt Biden and the Democrats are. They’ve even refused him Secret Service protection. Here was Kennedy’s immediate response on X: “The Democratic Party’s strategy is to beat President Trump in the courtroom rather than the ballot box. This will backfire in November. Even worse, it is profoundly undemocratic.” In a direct shot at Biden, Kennedy added: “America deserves a President who can win at the ballot box without compromising our government’s separation of powers or weaponizing the courts. You can’t save democracy by destroying it first. The Democrats are afraid they will lose in the voting booth, so instead they go after President Trump in the courtroom.” 

The Democratic Party’s strategy is to beat President Trump in the courtroom rather than the ballot box. This will backfire in November. Even worse, it is profoundly undemocratic.

America deserves a President who can win at the ballot box without compromising our government’s…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 30, 2024

Kennedy knows this acutely because he has watched these professed champions of “Democracy!” rush to the courts in every state to keep him off ballots. That’s what they do. They weaponize the courts.

And though liberals will recoil at the accusation, what they’ve pursued against Trump truly has been “election interference” via the courts. They’ll insist that they’re simply seeking legal justice, but they can’t deny their obvious intention to silence Trump from campaigning and possibly prevent him from the GOP nomination. It’s stunningly perfect for them that Trump’s sentencing will come just days before the GOP convention in Milwaukee. How convenient.

But how will this work for them, ultimately? Next week’s polling numbers will be fascinating to see. Right now, in the RealClearPolitics average, Trump leads Biden by only 0.9 percent. If that number jumps up next week, liberals will have a meltdown. And to many Trump supporters, the liberals’ branding of him and them will be a badge of honor. 

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