PBS NewsHour | Season 2024 | May 31, 2024 - PBS NewsHour full episode | PBS

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

68% : LISA DESJARDINS: As Trump plans his appeal, his base spoke in dollars.
62% : One out of the nine voters in this focus group said that this verdict made him more likely to support Donald Trump.
58% : Well, as Lisa Desjardins reported earlier in this broadcast, Donald Trump addressed reporters this morning.
58% : That's at PBS.org/NewsHour.GEOFF BENNETT:
54% : Amna, this focus group was of voters who voted for Donald Trump twice in 2016 and in 2020.
51% : The parade of Republican officials who had supported Trump in the courtroom during the trial blasted the outcome.
50% : I drink water, lemon water, and protect my head with a piece of cloth.
50% : They tend to be people who supported Biden in 2020 and now are shifting over to Trump.
49% : And Michele, that voter, Amna, Michele, she had voted for Republicans her entire life, voted for Trump twice.
49% : At the same time, she wants to continue consolidating the National Guard, wants to make sure it falls under the Ministry of Defense.
46% : Vermont has become the first state to require oil companies to pay for damage caused by climate change.
40% : One, Mark, who we heard from, said that he would vote for Trump.
39% : It carried a lot of weight with a number of the other voters, who also some of them raised January 6 as something -- the insurrection as something that had started to convince them that they maybe couldn't vote for Trump again.
39% : But we -- Trump is not the only populist semi-authoritarian in the world.
37% : But he had this to say in response to what Donald Trump had said.
35% : And so after this verdict, they said, about six of them, there were nine total, about six of those voters said that the fact that these were felonies that Trump was convicted of carried more weight for them than if they had been misdemeanors.
35% : But as for whether or not they thought that Donald Trump should go to jail, Valerie, 64, also from Georgia, had a very strong response to that.
34% : And whether you like what Alvin Bragg did or not, he was -- Trump was convicted on 34 counts by a jury.
31% : But, if he were elected, Trump could not pardon himself, as these are state and not federal crimes.
31% : And, at the end of the day, they were asked, if you had to pick between President Biden or Donald Trump, who would you pick come November?
31% : It was a week that saw Donald Trump become the first former American president to be convicted of a felony.
30% : And Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a transgressor.
29% : And out of those nine voters, five of them said that this made them less likely to support Donald Trump, including 52-year-old Michele from Florida.
27% : Well, we're starting to see some direct impact, Amna, because, as you noted, a lot of Republicans, in addition to Donald Trump, have said that -- tried to sow doubt about the justice system, have directly attacked the judge in this case.
26% : The people who are marginal -- and there are a significant number of people who tell pollsters, I will reconsider my vote if Donald Trump is convicted.
25% : "The fallout continued today after the historic conviction of Donald Trump on 34 criminal charges in New York City.
21% : Well, David, picking up on that point, what does all of this reveal about Donald Trump, the space he occupies in American life, and the degree to which he has really shifted the center of our politics?DAVID BROOKS:
21% : There's plenty of time to litigate the case against Donald Trump.
21% : Listen, I had some doubts about an elected Democrat prosecutor going after Donald Trump in New York.
20% : Jonathan, I was talking to a Democratic operative today not aligned with the Biden campaign, but who said this is the time that the Biden campaign should litigate the case against Donald Trump to effectively say, you might have concerns about inflation, you might have concerns about Biden's age, but are you really going to vote for a convicted felon?JONATHAN CAPEHART:
18% : And when it comes to Speaker Johnson, I just find what he says basically as dangerous as what Donald Trump said today during that press conference at Trump Tower.
16% : "In just over an hour, Trump's senior adviser responded sharply: "You just ended your campaign," a sign of the risk and retaliation facing those who break with Trump.Democrats, including Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, largely focused on rule of law.
16% : But the other thing that is most -- I find fascinating about this, and I forgot to mention this in my first answer, I can't believe Nixon, President Nixon, Richard Nixon had something that Donald Trump does not have.
16% : They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.
14% : And yet Donald Trump has been impeached twice and is running for president again basically to keep himself, he hopes, out of prison, given the other cases that are coming down the road.
12% : And it's not just him.Senate Majority Leader -- Senate Minority Leader, rather, Mitch McConnell, who has had a frosty relationship with Donald Trump, says, in his view, this case never should have been brought in the first place.

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