Trump’s New York trial is a political spectacle unseen in America since Watergate

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Watergate had a “smoking gun.” The Donald Trump hush-money trial has “catch and kill.” Watergate had a telltale piece of tape on a basement door. The Trump trial has a doorman with a (spurious) tale to tell. Watergate had a senator who asked what the president knew and when he knew it. The Trump trial has a judge who said, “I need to know what is true.” Watergate had a president whose language was full of expletives deleted. The Trump trial has a former president accused of “vitriol.”

American political life hasn’t had a political spectacle like the Trump trial since the Watergate years.

As was the case with Watergate and its many trials, which grew out of a 1972 break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee, huge issues are now at stake. This time, a presidential election may hang in the balance.

There are other historical parallels. The Bill Clinton presidency was tested by Mr. Clinton’s comportment with a White House intern. Mr. Clinton suffered humiliation and experienced guilt, but enjoyed political redemption. The prospect of a future Donald Trump presidency is now being tested by his alleged dalliance with a porn star. Mr. Trump may be immune to mortification and incapable of sentiments of guilt, but he still may emerge triumphant.

At the very least, the American political system is under domestic strain and global observation in this tawdry New York trial – and in three other criminal prosecutions against Mr. Trump that could bleed over until after the election. Indeed, it is not only Mr. Trump that is on trial.

Big questions – including those surrounding Mr. Trump’s contention that presidents have virtually complete immunity from prosecution, a sprawling notion that was the subject of separate Supreme Court arguments Thursday – are in the air. Their resolution will affect American civic life for decades.

Mr. Trump’s supporters and detractors are oddly in accord about the stakes.

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They agree, for example, that the trials of Mr. Trump are about whether the hand of justice is applied fairly. The Trump supporters argue that the prosecution of the former president over a payoff to a porn star is laced with politics – that Mr. Trump is being singled out less for his proclivity for paying hush money than for his habit of unsettling the political establishment. The Trump critics argue that Mr. Trump is being treated not as a former president with special privileges but as an ordinary citizen subject to ordinary legal procedures.

Both sides also agree that this trial and the three expected to follow – dealing with whether he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, whether he more broadly tried to interfere with the 2020 election, and whether he obstructed an investigation in connection with illegal possession of government documents – may shape the November election.

The political alchemy here is complicated. Repeatedly, Mr. Trump has transformed legal peril into political gold.

He has used his indictments as incentives for supporters to contribute to his campaign and, in effect, to his defence fund. Additionally, his poll ratings have grown since his first indictments. He glided to victories in the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, essentially assuring his Republican renomination with a swiftness unprecedented in contested battles. A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden in a tie at 46 per cent each – and still tied at 37 per cent each if other candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are on the ballot.

And yet.

The first formal criminal trial of a former American president may hold peril for Mr. Trump.

A third of Americans, and a third of independents, say they would be less likely to vote for him if he is convicted, according to a Politico/Ipsos poll. Even so, the separate Quinnipiac poll released this week indicated that nearly a third of Trump voters say they would be even more likely to vote for him if he is found guilty. These findings relate only to the New York case, which in the nearly unanimous view of legal experts and political commentators is the least important legal proceeding the president faces. (The timing of the other trials is uncertain, though there are court dates for them scheduled every month from now through October.)

Then there is the jail factor – an unlikely eventuality, to be sure, but one that Mr. Trump could face, either in a judge’s ruling of contempt of court or in a jury verdict.

Multiple people who are close to Mr. Trump (or once were), have said he fears nothing more than being sent to prison. But even incarceration, as distasteful as it may be to a man who prizes his independence and recoils from any semblance of confinement, may work to his advantage. At the very least, it could mobilize and motivate his political base, and allow him to trumpet the notion that he is a political prisoner – a term he has employed to describe many of the imprisoned principals in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.

The script for that might be torn from the life of James Michael Curley, a former governor of Massachusetts and member of the U.S. Congress who served four non-consecutive terms as mayor of Boston. Mr. Curley, who had a base of supporters with a fervour much like that of Trump’s, was elected mayor in 1946 after being indicted twice, first for bribery and then for mail fraud. He was convicted and sentenced to prison in 1947, serving five months until president Harry Truman commuted his six-to-18-month sentence.

“Trump can play the role of the martyr,” Jack Beatty, author of the classic 1992 biography The Rascal King: The Life And Times Of James Michael Curley, said in an interview. “He can say he’s ‘persecuted.’ Curley did that. And Curley played it up big, talking about political trials and seeking sympathy by saying his enemies put an old man in prison. Trump can do that, too.”

Much of that already is part of the Trump libretto. But the trial in New York, and the ones to follow, are not a comic opera. They are perhaps more like Beethoven’s Fidelio, which deals with government officials, political rivalries and the legal system. Both supporters and opponents of Mr. Trump agree, with competing arguments, that these trials ultimately are about justice.