Donald Trump is going to prison

I’m the guy who has said all along that Donald Trump is going to prison. I used to take a lot of heat for saying it. Now that Trump has been convicted on dozens of felony counts, more people are coming around to my way of seeing things. But of course there’s the open question of whether Trump will go to prison over today’s conviction.

Keep in mind that there are widely varying levels of felonies, and the ones that Trump was convicted on today are the absolute lowest level of felony. Of all the people who have been convicted on this particular kind of felony, only about ten percent of them have ended up with prison time.

That said, there are some things working against Trump. These are low level felonies, but there are a whopping thirty-four of them. And Trump’s repeated misbehavior during the trial is legal grounds for a harsher sentence. It’ll also hurt Trump when he presumably says ignorant things during his sentencing hearing instead of showing contrition. In fact pretty much everything is working against Trump here, with the singular exception of the fact that he has no prior criminal record (his three other pending criminal cases can’t be used against him in the sentencing for this trial because he hasn’t been convicted in any of them yet).

So yes, I expect that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg will seek prison time for Donald Trump, and I think there’s at least a chance that Judge Juan Merchan will give Trump prison time. Merchan could also go with a hybrid sentence, where he gives Trump thirty days of prison time and six months of probation, or something along those lines. There is also the possibility of house arrest, which would force Trump to get permission any time he wants to leave the house to hold a campaign event.

I don’t want to try to put odds on Trump getting prison time in this trial because only Merchan knows what’s going on in his own head. But the odds are certainly a lot higher than the rhetoric that we’re hearing on television. That’s just ratings-driven talk. The same people who said Trump wasn’t even under criminal investigation, and then said he’d never be indicted, and then said he’d never go on trial, and then said a jury could never be seated, and then said he’d never be convicted, are now insisting the odds of him getting prison in this trial are zero. Whatever the odds are, they’re a lot higher than zero.

And while I can’t say what the odds are of Trump getting prison time in this case, he’s a lock to get prison time in his upcoming criminal trials if he’s convicted. All three are centered around the most serious kinds of felonies, the kind that automatically come with multi-year prison sentences. It’s still an open question as to how many of those trials will happen between now and the election, but there’s still good reason to expect that one or two of them will.

But the Republican Party can still make Donald Trump its 2024 nominee for President even if he’s in prison. He wouldn’t be the first high profile candidate to run for President from a prison cell (though Eugene Debs lost badly). As I’ve been saying for a long time, Trump’s downfall isn’t going to consist of him falling through a single trap door. He’s going to keep fighting, more weakly and feebly than ever, like that hapless knight in Monty Python who just doesn’t know how to quit while he’s behind.

And remember, the Republican Party is going to make someone its nominee for President in 2024, and that nominee is going to be someone horrible. At this point would you rather it be a feeble, senile, broken, convicted Donald Trump, or would you rather they swap him out at the convention for someone like Nikki Haley who has less baggage?

So if the Republican Party really wants to go ahead with handing Trump the nomination at its convention, four days after he’s sentenced in this trial, then so be it. We were always going to have to run against someone in 2024. The Republicans simply get to pick their poison.