The guilty verdict levied Thursday against Donald Trump might just end up embodying the purest incarnation of a Pyrrhic victory for the Democratic party.
While Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the rest of the anti-Trump Democrats might have won in the short-term, the obvious flaws in the trial, the clear bias of the judge, and the lack of a clear crime have already begun backfiring on the Democrats.
With Trump’s campaign website crashing mere hours after the verdict, raising $34.8 million in less than a day, and many on the social media platform X stating the verdict , suffice to say the aftermath has not gone as anticipated.
And now, independent candidate and lifelong Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has appeared on Fox News to provide his own take on the Trump guilty verdict — and Never Trumpers are not going to like it.
Speaking with Fox News host Jesse Watters, RFK Jr. expressed his belief that this verdict will, undoubtedly, “backfire” on the Democrats.
Trending:
“What do you think happened there in Lower Manhattan tonight?” Watters asked Kennedy.
“I think… this conviction is going to backfire on the Democrats,” Kennedy bluntly said. “I think every time that President Trump has been indicted, that his approval ratings actually increase, his popularity increases.”
Kennedy then added “there’s a large number of Americans who are going to see this as the politicization of, a weaponization of the enforcement agencies.
Is RFK Jr. right about this?
“And I think it’s bad for our democracy, I think the DNC feels like it has a candidate that cannot win fair and square in the polls, and so they have to win in the courts,” Kennedy elaborated.
While no one could or should ever mistake RFK Jr. for a conservative, he has been in politics a long time, and came from the immensely political Kennedy family. At the very least, it gives him a baseline understanding of how most things work in Washington.
That Kennedy has agreed with Republicans and conservatives about how laughably awful this case was, and how much it could turn public opinion against the Democrats, lends credence to that initial impression.
Kennedy didn’t stop there, however.
He continued, saying that he’s “not a fan of President Trump’s, but I want to win, I want to beat him in a campaign, on a level playing field,” before listing the many “issues” Trump has that he would have wanted to discuss.
“I don’t want to beat him in a courtroom,” Kennedy reiterated, “I think it’s not good for our country, and I think it’s really going to backfire on the Democrats.”
When speaking to Fox, Kennedy was repeating an opinion that had already been vocally expressed across the world. In short, everyone knows that the jury’s verdict was “profoundly undemocratic,” and Kennedy doubled down on that sentiment on X, posting that “You can’t save democracy by destroying it first.”
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
Considering how much heat Biden got from posting a donation link to his X account mere minutes after The New York Times announced the verdict, it seems safe to say that Kennedy’s prognostication is right on the money.
Again, it’s still too early to tell how this verdict will effect the upcoming election, but with the outpouring of support Trump has already received, it certainly hasn’t had the short term effect that the Democrats had hoped for.
Has this verdict clinched the election for Trump?
It’s a fool’s errand to predict a November election in May — but, as of right now, the guilty verdict has done nothing but help the former president.
And RFK Jr. expressing much of these same sentiments, even though there is no love lost between him and Trump, only makes that possibility seem all the more likely.
