Source: The News & Observer, The Charlotte Observer
Donald Trump was found guilty late last month of falsifying business records in an attempt to deceive the American public before the 2016 election. Twelve ordinary Americans found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts related to falsified checks, ledger entries, and invoices for his attempt to cover up a sex scandal that could have imperiled his 2016 presidential campaign.
With the guilty verdict, Trump is now the first president in American history to be a convicted felon. Public polling conducted after the verdict shows that the majority of Americans support the verdict and that almost half think it means Trump should end his campaign.
And yet North Carolina Republicans, led by Mark Robinson, have doubled down on their support for the convicted felon. Taking cues from Trump himself, Robinson immediately posted baseless allegations on social media after the verdict, accusing Democrats and the government of being at fault rather than Trump.
Not to be outdone, the Republican nominee for Attorney General, Dan Bishop, compared Trump’s conviction to the miscarriages of justice that Black Southerners faced during Jim Crow.
“It’s as bad as it was in Alabama in 1950, if a person happened to be Black, to get justice. And, that’s what they did in New York,” Bishop said on a Charlotte radio station earlier this month.
Bishop also posted on his official Congressional account shortly after the verdict, a vague and ominous threat that “A reckoning is coming for gangster government.”
Robinson and Bishop’s actions reflect the strange stranglehold Trump appears to have on the Republican Party. Public polling also shows that 34% of Republicans say Trump’s verdict makes them more likely to vote for him, and 58% of Republicans now say a convicted felon should be able to be president, up from just 17% in April.
