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As the Trump trial moves toward a verdict, are Americans paying attention?
- author, John Sudworth
- role, Senior North American Correspondent in New York
The trial was expected to be a uniquely American blockbuster, filled with salacious details and with a former president in the dock.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine a larger, made-for-the-media legal drama than one in which Donald Trump, once the most powerful man in the world and seeking to become so again, is forced to listen in silence to allegations of an awkward sexual relationship with a porn star.
A political and legal thriller in which a man not known for his modesty often had to listen with his eyes tightly shut as everything from descriptions of his satin pyjamas to comparisons to “a Cheetos-covered cartoon villain” appeared in the court record.
But despite weeks of testimony, millions of pages of documents and the hordes of live television cameras gathered outside to record the historic spectacle of the first criminal trial of a former U.S. leader, the American public seems curiously apathetic.
In a recent YouGov/Yahoo News poll, only 16 percent of respondents said they were following the trial “very closely,” and only a third of those surveyed said they were even somewhat interested in the trial.
More Americans said they were “bored” or “angry” than they were interested in the trial, a finding echoed in other polls measuring attention during the trial.
As the jury’s verdict nears, pundits and pollsters who once predicted a national event could unfold from Room 1530 Criminal Court in lower Manhattan now have a hunch that whatever the outcome, it may be met with more failure than outrage.
Trump has always denied having sex with Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and his legal team has tried to portray her as a fabricator in court.
They alleged that she used the notoriety from the allegations to make money, including a variety of merchandise, such as “Stormy, the Saint of Allegations” candles.
In one of the trial’s most memorable exchanges, Trump lawyer Susan Necheles said porn stars have “plenty of experience making false stories about sex look real.”
“Wow,” Daniels retorted. “The sex in that movie is so real, like in a hotel room,” she continued, adding that if the story had been fiction, “it would have been better written.”
She described how Trump opened the door to her hotel room wearing his pajamas and then stripped down to his underwear while she went to the bathroom, followed by an unguarded, unexpected encounter that left her shaken and desperate to leave.
But on the surface, this case was not about what did or did not happen in a golf resort hotel room.
Rather, the crime was allegedly committed with the intent of covering up the incident.
Shortly before the 2016 election, Daniels was paid $130,000 by Trump aide, lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen in exchange for her silence, but prosecutors allege that the purpose was to fraudulently conceal information from voters.
With the election looming, they argued, the Trump campaign was already reeling from the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, which showed the candidate bragging that his fame allowed him to do anything he wanted to women, including grabbing them by their genitals.
The timing, prosecutors said, explains why the Trump campaign needed to buy off Stormy Daniels’ silence, even as she would have been further damaged if she had gone public with her allegations.
Some believe that public indifference to the case is not as surprising as it may seem.
First, Donald Trump has long been known to face fierce criticism — notoriety is part of the brand, and perceptions of whether he has committed wrongdoing are sharply divided along political lines.
And second, American voters are not as scrupulous as many think, a point made clear by another sex scandal in another political era.
Bill Galston served in senior policy positions in the Bill Clinton administration and is currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“If you’re asking me if I know about the sex scandals in and around the Oval Office, of course I do,” he told me.
He said there are parallels between the current Trump trial and the allegations in the late 1990s that then-President Clinton lied to cover up a sex scandal with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
“I’ve been involved in heated debates on both sides of the political aisle,” Galston said, “and people have wondered where the anger is.”
Polls then were remarkably similar to those now, with only 15% of Americans saying they were watching the Clinton impeachment trial live on television, and just over a third saying they were watching it “somewhat.”
That’s roughly the same as polling for the Trump trial, which, by contrast, is not televised.
Bill Clinton was acquitted by the US Senate, so will Donald Trump enjoy similar immunity, if not from the US criminal justice system, then from the American people?
“Some Americans might look at this news and say, ‘Well, he lied about sex, and is that really such a new thing?'” Galston suggests.
“One of the long historical trajectories here is the normalization of crimes that were previously considered deadly.”
Far from focusing on the details, the centrality of the sexual allegations and the salacious nature of the case may be why voters appear uninterested.
In addition to all this, there is a widely shared view that the Manhattan trial is by far the weakest of the four criminal cases facing Donald Trump.
The case is based on bookkeeping violations, including the alleged misrepresentation of payments to Michael Cohen for bribes to Stormy Daniels as attorneys’ fees rather than hush money.
The case revolves around a charge of trying to improperly influence an election that has been elevated from a misdemeanor to a more serious felony.
And given that the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case, Alvin Bragg, has openly touted his record of taking on Trump in court, it’s hard to escape the impression that there is at least a political element to the case — always a danger in America’s system of elected prosecutors.
Even Galston, a former Clinton administration insider, said “you’d have to be very insensitive” to deny that there was a whiff of partisanship.
Trump has taken full advantage of this concern, speaking daily from the courthouse steps and claiming to be the victim of authoritarian persecution — and, of course, this is coming from a man who has sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election and continues to make false claims of election fraud.
If there’s a national moment in this case, it may simply be the emerging realization that Donald Trump’s political momentum is unlikely to be curbed by the justice system. The New York hush-money case is the only one of Trump’s four criminal cases likely to be tried before the Nov. 5 election.
The most significant cases against Trump – those relating to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and the possession of classified documents – have become bogged down in lawsuits filed by his lawyers.
Instead, we have this one case, steeped in sexual scandal and based on complex legal arguments that Trump will manipulate to his political advantage, win or lose. An acquittal would prove the entire case a witch hunt, and a conviction would make Trump a martyr among his supporters.
While some polls suggest that at least some Trump supporters might be hesitant to vote for someone with a criminal conviction, one can’t help but wonder why a conviction for a felony bookkeeping charge would ultimately be unpalatable to his staunch supporters.
As the verdict looms, Trump held a rally on Thursday in New York’s Bronx borough, where more than 80 percent of the residents are black or Hispanic.
This is one of the most heavily Democratic districts in the country, but among locals who flocked to the polls wearing the obligatory MAGA hats, there was evidence of that same fierce passion for their candidate’s unconventional approach.
Roger Watson, a Bronx-born Manhattan doorman, told me part of the appeal is that Trump is using his second term to manipulate the Justice Department, threatening to indict Joe Biden and pardon the Jan. 6 rioters.
“I think it’s a big cleanup,” he said. “It’s the only way.”
Asked if an autocratic leader is what he wants, he replied: “Of course.”
TK, wearing a hat with “TRUMP” written on it in large letters, agreed.
“The justice system is already messed up,” she argued. “I don’t want him to be some kind of dictator, but sometimes you have to assert yourself.”
Would she have second thoughts if she was convicted?
“No,” she replied. “The charges being brought against him about Stormy are his private life. Please don’t interfere in his private life.”
The greatest irony of this trial is that the hush money payments ultimately amounted to nothing and the Stormy Daniels story is now written into political and legal history.
The result is that in an ordinary New York courtroom, 12 ordinary men and women find themselves trying a man of great wealth and power, and their verdicts (guilty, innocent or void) could have unforeseen consequences.
But will the turning of the judicial wheels force Trump to cave in? It seems unlikely.
For many of his supporters, the destructive danger he poses to the American political system is not an assertion they deny; it is part of his appeal.
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