The utterly ridiculous "convicted felon" taunt
It is not reasonable to abuse the legal system to invent a "crime" that would never have been prosecuted had Hillary Clinton been elected in 2016.
This deserves to be repeated: The fact that Donald Trump was convicted of "34 felonies" is utter nonsense and those "convictions" are based in denial of the 2016 election results. Joe Biden brought up these "convictions" to taunt Trump during the debate, and no doubt this will be used as a taunt throughout the 2024 campaign.
"But Trump was convicted after a fair trial!"
No, it was not a fair trial. Trump paid a porn actress to be quiet about having sex with him. Nondisclosure agreements are not illegal. The prosecutor's legal theory is that invoices and payment of those invoices constituted a campaign finance violation that defrauded voters and deprived them of information needed to cast their votes. The internal business records were made in 2017 - months after the 2016 election. There was no effort to deceive voters with internal business records. (The records were not even false. The payments were for legal services.) This is punishment for winning that election.
I am a "Never Trump" voter. I will not vote for him again. I find the man to be personally detestable. But two things can be true at once:
Trump is a wicked man.
Trump broke no law by paying a porn star for her silence.
I mean, come on. The prosecutor could not even explicitly say what "law" was broken with the "false" financial records. So he let the jury choose what "crime" was being covered up by the "false" records. The entire trial was rigged to get a conviction from the very beginning. There is also legal precedent: John Edwards directly used campaign funds to pay his mistress, and was not convicted of any "campaign finance" violation. Trump used personal funds to pay his mistress for her silence - something he has undoubtedly done many times before he ever ran for President.
It is reasonable to use this case to attack Trump's character and fitness for office. It is not reasonable to abuse the legal system to invent a "crime" that would never have been prosecuted had Hillary Clinton been elected in 2016. There is a reason that Trump's support and fundraising went up after he was convicted: Tens of millions of people understand that this was rigged and that other people (like John Edwards and Bill Clinton) have walked away with no criminal convictions after doing worse things to cover up their own adultery.
But the worst thing this has done is eviscerate trust in the criminal justice system. You cannot confine this to Trump alone: Once it has been demonstrated that the system can be rigged to get "convictions" in such an egregious manner, trust in the entire system is diminished. It is not worth tearing down trust in the entire criminal justice system to "get Trump." The repercussions for this abuse of the system have only begun, and we will regret destroying the system's credibility for decades to come. Sad!