Trump's real punishment - Washington Examiner

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

63% : This is from a 2023 newsletter: "Look at the last day the national race was close, or relatively close: March 27 of this year, when Trump led Ron DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics average by 15 points, 44% to 29%.
56% : Trump paid a serious price in time, money, and reputation.
53% : By April 20, just three weeks later, Trump had risen 10 points to 54%.
52% : One school of thought saw Trump benefiting from the indictments in the GOP contest but at the same time becoming unelectable in a national race.
47% : In any event, the Bragg indictment, followed by others, preoccupied Trump for the entire span of the Republican primary season.
47% : For seven weeks, Trump had to be present in the courtroom, day after day, instead of campaigning.
46% : But the law allowed Bragg to bring the charges -- we might learn more about that on appeal -- and Trump had to defend himself.
41% : Just days later, Trump was indicted for the first time, by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and his poll numbers rose sharply.
40% : Trump tried to make the best of things politically by holding mini-events in Manhattan and a rally in the Bronx, but the fact was, during a formative period of the national campaign, he was tied down in a courtroom.
37% : Merchan and Bragg would have been happy to send Trump to jail, but the fact that in 10 days the defendant will become president of the United States put Merchan and the prosecutors in a bind.
35% : The worry among Republicans was that while Trump's party was rock-solid behind him, the conviction might hurt him among the independents whose support Trump needed if he was to win.
32% : But that does not mean Trump has not been punished in the case.
32% : The prosecution -- weak, ill founded, and politically motivated -- began when Bragg indicted Trump on March 30, 2023.
31% : All those Democrats and other Trump opponents who have long wanted to call Trump a "convicted felon"?
31% : After those seven weeks, on May 30, 2024, the deep-blue Manhattan jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts.
31% : Although anti-Trumpers had long called Trump all sorts of names -- criminal wasn't even the worst of them -- the fact was that Trump, in his first 76 years of life, had never been charged with a crime.
31% : In his stump speeches, Trump often joked that he didn't know how it happened, but he had been indicted more times than Al Capone.
30% : Instead, Trump went up in the polls.
30% : But the fact that there will be no jail or probation for Trump does not mean he has not paid a high price for what at bottom was a baseless and politically targeted prosecution.
29% : But Bragg inflated them into felonies by alleging that Trump altered his company's bookkeeping in a plot to steal the 2016 election.
28% : In the end, of course, the Bragg prosecution did not keep Trump from being elected president.
27% : Although Trump had been convicted of 34 felonies, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to what is called "unconditional discharge," which means no jail time, no probation, and no fine or other punishment.
20% : In the middle of the campaign against Biden, Trump became, unofficially at least, a convicted felon.
18% : It formalized Trump's guilty verdict, meaning that Trump is now officially a convicted felon.
18% : It's fair to say that Trump's adversaries believed getting indicted would hurt Trump politically.
15% : But remember this: Trump's adversaries, the ones trying to use the indictments against him, hoped the criminal charges would keep Trump from being elected president, not necessarily from being the Republican nominee.

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