The public seems to believe both that the effort to prosecute Trump is politically motivated and that he is guilty and should be put away.
The public seems to believe both that the effort to prosecute Trump is politically motivated and that he is guilty and should be put away.
C ontrary to what you might encounter on social media, most Americans have neither studied nor practiced criminal law. Understandably then, when forced by current events to evaluate a high-profile allegation of criminal malfeasance, they use a variety of tools to navigate the issue. Friends and family, trusted public commentators, the summaries of the case they encounter on television and in print, and their general assessment of the forces arrayed on both sides of the issue inform their analysis. Americans who do not benefit from jury instructions handed down by a judge can often hold competing and even contradictory thoughts about a particular case in their heads. That seems to describe how the public views Donald Trump’s many legal woes.
On Wednesday, the New York Times unveiled the portions of the latest survey it conducted alongside Siena College pollsters that tested Americans’ views toward the legal cases against Trump. That’s a remarkably broad category given the many criminal trials the former president will have to sit through in the near future. Still, the generalization is helpful insofar as it bundles together all Trump’s alleged malfeasance into one unwieldy package.
First, the Times/Siena survey is valuable for the perspective it provides. Only a bare majority of Americans (52 percent) are paying “some” or “a lot” of attention to Trump’s legal travails. Among those who are quick to tell pollsters, at least, that they’re paying little or no attention to the issue are self-described Republicans, Trump 2020 voters, and those who did not vote in the last presidential election. Relatedly, those are the demographics among whom Trump performs best in this survey’s test of a head-to-head rematch against Joe Biden next November. For now, it’s difficult but not impossible to avoid headlines relating to Trump’s trials. It would be a herculean feat to maintain that level of detachment next year, when Trump will be forced to spend much of the campaign inside courtrooms.
More intriguingly, the public seems to believe both that the effort to prosecute Trump is politically motivated and that he is guilty and should be put away.
Registered voters are split on the question of whether the charges against Trump — which include the classified-documents case, the false-electors case, the racketeering case, and the porn-star hush-money-payment case — are politically motivated. Forty-six percent of voters say they are. Forty-eight percent say they’re not. But when asked if Trump has committed “serious federal crimes,” a conclusion reserved only for the allegations that Trump illegally purloined classified documents and participated in an effort to defraud the U.S. archives to derail the certification of the 2020 election results, a whopping 58 percent of voters say he’s guilty. Only one-third of voters maintain Trump’s innocence.
Many of these voters may simply be casting a pox on both the Justice Department and the defendant. But we can also draw from those results the unsettling conclusion that many of Trump’s voters believe he abdicated his duty as the chief executor of America’s laws by not only failing to enforce those laws but violating them himself. Indeed, more than one-fifth of Republicans and Trump voters told pollsters that Trump is probably guilty of the charges special counsel prosecutor Jack Smith is pursuing. They don’t appear to care.
Even if Trump is guilty, a near-majority of voters do not believe he will enjoy his right to a “fair and impartial trial.” Only 43 percent of respondents think the charges against Trump will be adjudicated fairly by a neutral judge and an unprejudiced jury. About one-fifth of self-described Democrats and Joe Biden voters agree with that proposition. They don’t seem especially bothered by any of this, either.
And yet, 47 percent of registered voters believe that Trump deserves to be found guilty at his “federal trial” “related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election.” Only 39 percent of respondents want to see Trump acquitted. Furthermore, a majority — 50 percent — think Trump deserves to be “sentenced to prison” for his misdeeds, including no less than 20 percent of Trump 2020 voters.
In sum, many Americans believe Trump will be denied justice. They think he is being unfairly targeted by politically motivated prosecutors, and the judges and juries that will decide his fate will discriminate against him. At the same time, Americans also believe Trump committed a variety of serious federal crimes for which he should be convicted and thrown in jail. These thoughts do not fall neatly along partisan lines — there is significant overlap across the partisan spectrum.
We can best describe the country’s outlook toward Trump’s prosecution as confused. But these impressions are likely to evolve over the coming year. Republicans had better hope that these results, which indicate that a sizeable portion of Trump voters plan to cast their ballots for someone they know to be guilty of the crimes of which he is accused, hold into the fall of 2024. The rationalizations demanded of someone who would try to synthesize these incompatible thoughts are exhausting. And a year is a long time to keep that up.