Why Donald Trump's Criminal Sentence Matters

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

64% : Trump will appeal.
49% : The room was emptier now; just a single Trump attorney, Emil Bove, sat at the defense table, or anywhere in the courtroom (Bove has also been nominated by Trump for a prominent Department of Justice perch).
48% : And that's why in ten days, President Trump was going to assume the office of the President of the United States.
44% : Almost palpably agonized, Merchan on Friday told Trump: "This Court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of a judgment of conviction without encroaching upon the highest office in the land is an unconditional discharge."
41% : There was also no mystery: in an order earlier this month Merchan made his intentions to sentence Trump to an unconditional discharge perfectly clear.
36% : This is not the outcome Trump wanted.
34% : I could see this, sitting two rows behind Donald Trump, as he turned and walked out to face the cameras and assail the process that brought him there.
34% : Trump had been an ordinary defendant, and by virtue of winning the election, he was no longer.
25% : When Trump was convicted, seven and a half months ago, on a spring day as balmy and verdant as Friday was frigid, after the jury foreman, a salt and pepper-haired immigrant from Ireland, said "guilty" 34 times, Trump rose and turned, looking stricken, his face uncharacteristically crumpled, reaching out to grasp the hand of his son, Eric.
23% : Trump fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to stop the sentencing from happening.
22% : Merchan leaned into the word "office."Despite having sentenced, in this very courtroom, Trump's former chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, to six months in jail following a guilty plea for felony fraud while working at the Trump Organization, despite having fined Trump's company $1.6 million dollars after a jury convicted Trump corporate entities for that same fraud, despite having taken testimony from the key witness in this case, former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen -- who himself received a three-year sentence in Federal court in part for some of the very same conduct at issue in Trump's case -- despite all this Merchan gave Trump nothing.
22% : "Trump, in his own brief statement to the court, continued to display that very disdain.
21% : "Merchan also went out of his way in that order to chide Trump and his team for attacking the court system, himself included.
20% : (Trump complained several times over the course of his trial about the courtroom temperature, with the judge indicating there was nothing that could be done.)
14% : From the time that former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. made public his investigation of Trump, in September of 2019, through the conclusion of this trial it was unclear if Trump would be indicted, tried, convicted, run for president again, win the nomination, win the presidency, or be sentenced for anything ever.
4% : Especially since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity in Trump v. U.S. "Donald Trump the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump the criminal defendant, would not be subject to such considerable protections," Merchan said in handing down his sentence.

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