The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Can Former President Trump 'Make Felonies Great Again'? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Well, we've all heard the news at this point. Trump is a FELON, after being convicted on 34 counts of financial fraud related to hiding his affair. So, can Trump spin this "publicity" in a positive light or will it bite him in the ass come November? Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/can-former-president-trump-make-felonies-great-again

Hey, everyone, Peters I'm in here. I am on my way to Milan to fly home, and you guys just wait for me to give them home to get suck me back into politics. Okay, so when I woke up this morning about the Donald Trump has been convicted in New York for a 34 counsel, laundering and financial fraud, for hiding an affair attempting to hide an affair that he had with a porn star, Sturby Daniels. The way it works is these are felonies, 34 felonies. The felony is because if you engage in fraud the attempt to hide a crime, it automatically is elevated a class in felony.

So let's do a quick Q&A with what are the standard things here and then talk about where this leads. Does this mean that Donald Trump can no longer run for president? No, it does not. There's nothing in the Constitution that says that there are restrictions on who can run for president. Although funny thing, he can't have vote, but he can still run for president. Number two, what's next? On May 11, we get our sentencing hearing, and it is unlikely that Trump will go to jail. This was a nonviolent crime, and he's a first-time felon. Feels weird to say that. So we're looking at probably some form of probation.

Now, probation comes with restrictions, and as we've seen in the trial with all of the charges of contempt of court and guide orders, the chances of Trump following those restrictions are going to be interesting, especially in terms of campaign setting. Number three, what about appeals? Appeals will happen, absolutely, but it's unlikely that we will see that appeals process completed before we have the presidential election. The big difference this time around is going to be scheduling, because when he hadn't been convicted of anything yet, the court was willing to create him a degree of deference when it came to scheduling. Now that he's been convicted of 34 felonies out is going to be very different. So, you know, things like the debates, things like rallies, those could actually be impacted pretty severely by whatever the appeal schedule is. Trump will, of course, have a vested interest in dragging this out of the law as possible, but even if he didn't do that, certainly not going to be resolved before we get to the first week of November and have the general election. And then finally, there's the question of whether or not this is a fair ruling or not.

Okay, so I'm in Italy right now, and a few of these conversations have come up. And, you know, the Italians have some experience with politicians who dabble in corruption, politicians who dabble in sex scandals, and politicians who combine the two. And the general petition here, which was really funny, is like, if you're going to do things like this, you have to have an accountant to hide everything well and a fixer, to make sure that the news doesn't get out. In the case of Donald Trump, those two things were the same person. So like, well, that's not very smart.

And then second, they're like, and you have to keep these two people as close to you as possible, because they're the ones who know where the bodies are. They're the people who have the receipts. And the reason why this court case was sewed up so quickly and why the jury only needed a couple of days to debate 34 different counts and why they came back with the unanimous verdict so quickly is that the fixer and the accountant and all of their documentation flipped and were testifying for the prosecution.

So the only other outstanding bit of information to make this an easy case was the Port Star herself, who also could show for her bank account the deposits into her bank account matched with the debits from Trump's account. So it really was from the accounting point of view of very open and shut case. The only other aspect I can think about for this matters of the impact we'll have on the election, and this is just amusing from Mike Wynneville. because as soon as the verdict came in in Trump campaign headquarters, cheers erupted. We can totally fundraise off of this. And in Biden election, headquarters cheers erupted because I can totally fundraise off of this.

Everyone seems to have forgotten the views of the 10% of the electorate where independents are just kind of nauseated by the bull thing. And independents have decided every presidential election since the early 1960s, and they are not going to vote for somebody who now has 34 felonies under his belt. So as far as I'm concerned, this verdict has decided the election, or other reasons to think that Trump was already in trouble, but this really makes it impossible for him to win. Assuming, of course, that Biden doesn't die.