On "Forbes Newsroom," political scientist Charles Lipson gave his unvarnished take on former President Trump's guilty verdict in the NYC hush money trial, the political and social fallout, and more.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Charles Lipson,
00:08Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. Charles, thank you so much for joining me.
00:13It's always a pleasure, Brittany.
00:15It's always a pleasure talking with you as well. And right now, we are sitting in a historic
00:20time and unprecedented time. I know we keep saying that, but it is true. Former President
00:26Donald Trump was convicted on Thursday on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business
00:31records. Can you first talk about the significance of the verdict here?
00:36It's huge. First, I would say that 34 is itself a political statement. That is, it was really
00:45one count that was repeated 34 times. Imagine that you walked out of a store, you stole
00:55something from a store you shoplifted. You walked out, and you had 34 items in your bag.
01:01They could charge you with shoplifting once, or they could charge you with shoplifting
01:05for all 34 items, and that's kind of what they did.
01:09The reason it's so big is twofold. One, it's yet another wedge in the American population.
01:19And I'll give you an example in a second. And the other is that there are a lot of people
01:26who still have a residual respect for the U.S. judicial system. And they think, well,
01:35a fair-minded judge sits on these cases, and ordinary people like me sit in the jury,
01:44and they hear a lot more than I do. And if they make a decision, I should respect that.
01:52So the question politically, I think, is, one, how much does this motivate the basis
02:03of the two parties? And I think even—and the answer is a lot. But it will motivate
02:12the Republicans more. And it will also, I think, in many cases, take people who were
02:21kind of—who were Republican but not so sure about Trump and say, this is unfair, and we're
02:28coming over to him. So some Nikki Haley voters. But I think the biggest issue—and let me put it
02:36concretely—the biggest issue is if you're a suburban independent voter outside of Philadelphia
02:45or Detroit or Milwaukee, three crucial swing states where we normally think Trump has to win
02:54one of those three to win the election. The question is, what do they think about it?
03:00Will it move them one way or the other?
03:03Do you think it will move them one way or the other? Because now Trump does have the title of
03:08convicted felon. Does anyone—does a voter, an independent voter, get so offended by this that
03:15they choose not to vote for him?
03:19I think there will be a—we don't know. But I think that what we will see is a battle of the media
03:26with all the mainstream media saying, oh, this is terrible. Oh, he's the worst. Oh, he's a convicted
03:35felon. And the right-wing media or the conservative media will say, A, we don't know the underlying
03:45crime. He was convicted on something we don't know of. That's a violation of the Constitution.
03:52You have to know what you're really charged with. And they will also say it was a political
03:58prosecution. What he's fundamentally accused of was something that Hillary Clinton essentially
04:08acknowledged doing when she paid for the fake Russian dossier and wrote that off as a campaign
04:17contribution with a payment to her lawyer, Mark Elias. And so the Federal Election Commission
04:25gave her a small fine. They chose not to even prosecute Trump for the same thing. So Alvin
04:34Bragg ginned this up into something very political. And the New York Times will play it one way.
04:44But I think a lot of media, certainly all the conservative media, including media that was
04:51not associated with Trump, like the National Review, have just been livid about this. Not
04:57a little angry, not this could go one way or the other. They think this is like that
05:02Major League umpire who was just thrown out because he couldn't call balls and strikes.
05:08They just think this is awful. Let me give you one more example on the other side.
05:16I live near the University of Chicago. It's a very liberal area in a deep blue state.
05:23And last night, right after the election, one of my neighbors held a party on her front porch
05:30to celebrate the verdict. And I'm going to go to a lunch today that's going to be filled
05:36with people who think that the truth is whatever they say on MSNBC. And I'll look forward
05:44to hearing how they see it. But they basically see, it just took, it's not so much that they
05:52even concentrate on the case itself. They will say, oh, yeah, it was proven. But they just think
05:59orange man bad. He should be put in jail.
06:05I think that the ad for President Biden pretty much pretty much writes itself because there were
06:1134 counts, all of them guilty. If you flip to any news channel, the anchor was reading count one
06:18guilty, guilty, guilty. I mean, he can just splice that up 34 times and run that as an ad. But if
06:24you're voting for Biden, you're part of the base, the Democratic base. It's not like this is
06:29changing your opinion of Trump. You weren't voting for him to begin with. If you're part of Trump's
06:34base, you're pretty much unmovable. So how much really is this a political liability for Donald
06:40Trump? Again, we just don't know. Let me give you let me give you a concrete example of that.
06:48Um, I think a lot of people will look back to the O.J. Simpson trial, right? In which
06:56there was a deep division in the country. In that case, it was a racial division.
07:01Um, I can remember it well, because I, I went into the political science main office at the
07:11University of Chicago, where I was, I was teaching at an office down the hall. And most people were
07:20kind of silent about it. But there was a person I had a very high regard for African American.
07:27She was the administrative chief administrative assistant in the office. And I closed the door
07:33and I asked her, could she say privately what she thought? She thought he was absolutely innocent.
07:41And I think over the polling showed that over 80% of African Americans showed he was thought he was
07:48innocent. It may have been as high as 90. What's interesting, and well over 80, maybe 90% of
07:56whites thought he was guilty. What's interesting is that over time,
08:02the African American, if you poll them, they now a vast majority think O.J. Simpson was guilty.
08:13So people's opinions change over time. I think in, in the case of O.J. Simpson, the reason that I'm
08:20bringing it up, it's not only that it divided the country, but there was a sense that people divided
08:29divided into their clusters, into their packs. And they didn't want to disagree with their packs.
08:38There weren't people who, who were living on our block, who thought Trump is bad, but I don't want
08:47to go to this party because I don't think this was a good conviction. I don't think this was right.
08:53I think they will do what you said, Brittany. And if you were going to vote for Biden,
08:59you're still going to vote for Biden. If you're going to vote for Trump, you're still,
09:02but I think it will increase the turnout maybe for both candidates, but certainly for Trump.
09:09And there's an interesting question about whether it will help him peel off groups that feel,
09:18I think often accurately that they've been mistreated by the U.S. justice system. And
09:24that begins with African-American men. What do you think this does for independent voters? Because
09:31this is an election that many are saying comes down to turnout, comes down to independent voters.
09:37They see now that Donald Trump is a convicted felon. You know, is this changing hearts and
09:43minds so much that this, this is the issue that they will cast their vote on? Or is this just a
09:49piece in a larger puzzle? It's the latter. It's the piece in a larger puzzle. But I think it's
09:59an important piece for the Democrats who until now, excuse me, until now had only one issue,
10:08which was abortion. This gives them a second issue and they will run with it until the election.
10:20There won't be time, excuse me, there won't be time,
10:28I think, for any appeal to go forward to a conclusion. The Trump team will make the appeal,
10:36but I remember Harvey Weinstein's conviction on one of the trials that he was convicted,
10:45he'll be in jail until he dies. But one of the convictions in New York was overturned by an
10:51appellate court in the last couple of months because the judge allowed in evidence that
10:58should never have been allowed into that trial. And there are a number of potentially reversible
11:04errors, according to lawyers who seem to know the case. I'm not a lawyer, but they say there
11:10were all kinds of things that were allowed in and testimony that should never have been given.
11:19Seemed to me from the outside, that the judge was part of the prosecution team. It was just not a
11:25fair-minded judge. And that's particularly important in a venue like Manhattan, where
11:34over 90% of the people voted against Trump. He starts with a huge negative
11:43weight on his shoulders. And that weight was amplified by the fact that the final, by two
11:53things, final arguments didn't lead immediately to a sequestered jury that could have made a
12:01decision in two or three days, we now know. The judge gave them a week off so they could go home
12:06and talk to all their family they were not supposed to. But how could they avoid it? They
12:11were not supposed to go on the internet. How could they avoid it? Or watch TV? How could they avoid
12:16it? In the environment of New York City, that really created a problem. The second thing is
12:27that New York has an unusual way of concluding trials. It lets the prosecution have the last
12:38word. So the defense can't rebut it. But the prosecution had hid the ball for the entire
12:47trial about what the underlying crime was. Remember, the things that Trump was accused of
12:53were misdemeanors on which the statute of limitation had run out. It only becomes a crime
13:01if it can be tied to some underlying crime. But what was the crime? We still don't know.
13:07The prosecution in the final summation hinted that it was and more than hinted that it was
13:17election interference. But they didn't really present any evidence. They're not supposed to
13:23testify. They didn't present any real evidence that that's what it was. And the judge prevented
13:34the defense from calling what's probably the world's greatest expert on US election law
13:42on the Trump side to say no, he didn't. This isn't an election law violation. Judge blocked that
13:50for reasons that are still unclear. And so I think there's going to be a real question here
13:56about whether this was a fair trial and whether it will be overturned on appeal.
14:01What you're talking about, those jury instructions, they did cause a big stir on social
14:07media. But that is New York law that the jury can come to a different conclusion that isn't special
14:12for Trump. But what you're saying, this response has been very united in the GOP of, hey, we think
14:19this is right. We think this is a sham. The Democrats have been united in saying, well,
14:24no one's above the law. President Biden has been has had a more muted response to this.
14:30He did not come out with a press conference or anything since the verdict. And he said he posted
14:36this on X. There's only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office at the ballot box,
14:41donate to our campaign today. And then the Biden White House said we respect the rule of law
14:46reportedly. So do you or that's what they reportedly said. What do you make of President
14:52Biden's strategy of being somewhat muted on this, not, you know, doing this overt victory lap?
15:00That's really smart. And that's what he should do. And it was wrong of them, of the campaign
15:08to send Robert De Niro to fulminate outside the court. That was clearly a campaign thing.
15:17They have a second reason to do it. It's not only smart in and of itself. They're going to
15:23have a problem with Hunter Biden, who goes on trial, first for guns and then for tax evasion.
15:33And so the more he says, respect all the, you know, he's a convicted felon, this and that,
15:42the other, it undermines sort of Hunter. Now, Hunter is not an elected official
15:49and children, parents aren't ultimately responsible for the acts of their adult children.
15:57The problem is that the GOP has depicted, and I think with quite a lot of evidence,
16:07that Hunter was the bag man for the family. And so he's, one of life's little rules is don't
16:15let a drug addict be your bag man. He may not be reliable when he gets to court.
16:21And that's kind of a problem. It's also a problem, you notice, that, you know,
16:29four years later, the government has finally said that the laptop of Hunter's is not only
16:36real, but that they're going to present it in court as authentic evidence. And remember,
16:42it wasn't just that everybody who was on the Biden team had said it was fake.
16:49And that organization was led by Anthony Blinken, who in effect got the Secretary of State job,
16:59because he organized that behind the scenes. And there were 51 people, but Joe Biden himself
17:07said it in a debate. He said it was fake. And all he had to do was ask his son.
17:16So I think that there is some vulnerability on that side. But I think that the biggest
17:23vulnerability of Biden remains the economy and immigration. And immigration, I view,
17:32Brittany, as part of a larger, there's disorder in the country.
17:39And you'll see a fight, actually, about the Democrats saying Trump is an agent of disorder.
17:46And the Republicans saying disorder is occurring under Biden, and you won't get rid of it unless
17:52you get rid of him. We're sitting right now, five months away from Election Day. So a lot,
18:00everything can change. We're going to see the conventions, we're going to see
18:03two debates that are planned. Does this or do you think this will even register with voters
18:10in November? Or will this be so baked in? Because we have seen Trump just cross so many Rubicons
18:16here. Exactly. I think it will still be big. And I think it will still be big. Because both sides
18:26will make it that way. Republicans are outraged and the Democrats will keep nailing, do you want
18:31to have a convicted felon sitting in the Oval Office? So yeah, I think it'll be big. But I
18:38think the more big events occur between now and then, the less important it will be. There will
18:46be riots at both conventions. And those will be riots from the left. And they will hurt.
18:56They hurt the Democrats, both because it's the incumbent party and because it's the party
19:02of the left. We also have a huge number of gotaways who have immigrated into the country,
19:12not even been apprehended. And it only took 19 to take down the World Trade Center.
19:18So we don't know if there'll be a Black Swan event, a really unusual event that will somehow
19:25shape. It could be an attempted shooting of a candidate. It could be a terrorist event. It could
19:34be any number of Black Swan events. And those will also shape the election. It doesn't look
19:42like there will be any interest rate cuts. It doesn't look like the economy will make some
19:49dramatic turn for the better. But it could always take a more dramatic turn for the worse.
19:57We are five months away. And a lot of people have been saying, although we see a conviction
20:02yesterday, this is the beginning, not the end. Are you suggesting that you think we are going
20:07to see some political violence after this verdict? I would be surprised if you saw political violence
20:20right now that was started by pro-Trump people. But I think there will be violence around the
20:30conventions. And I think if there is violence around the conventions, there could be pushback
20:38from these right-wing crazies, not because they're pro-Trump, but because they just like violence
20:47and they like disorder, as does Antifa and so forth. There could also be more disruptions
20:58in the autumn on college campuses because it doesn't look, according to what Israeli officials
21:04say, doesn't look as if the war will be over in Gaza by then. And if it's not, you will see more
21:13of those protests. So I think the country is in a very delicate position now. And it's not just
21:19because of one thing, but it's because we've seen a lot of disruption since the BLM riots in 2020.
21:29Mostly peaceful. I want to talk about, before I let you go, Donald Trump and his campaign
21:36released a statement that he reportedly saw a historic $34.8 million in small-dollar donations
21:44in the less than 24 hours from the verdict. And the campaign said that 29.7 percent of the donors
21:51are new to the platform when read. Are you surprised by this?
21:56I'm not. And in fact, there were so many people who went on to the website that the site crashed
22:03from overuse. But I think it's a big deal that there are new donors. And that does surprise me
22:12a bit. I mean, the fact that he got a lot of donations doesn't surprise me. The fact that
22:17the new donations does. Because I think what that says is that people who are not already
22:29motivated in this camp think this was an unfair trial. But I've got to say, I do have friends
22:37across the political spectrum. And I wrote an article that appeared in
22:42Spectator World immediately after the verdict. And I said, this is not only damaging to Trump,
22:50it's damaging to the New York courts, and it's damaging to our court system.
22:56And from two people who are on the left, who are friends of mine, I mean, I know them well,
23:03so they weren't just anonymous people. They both sent literally one-line statements. One said,
23:10you're kidding. And the other said, sour grapes. And so they don't even think it's worth debating.
23:19It's so obvious. And I must have gotten, you know, 100 letters from people who read the
23:26article and just said, this is an outrage. The conviction, not my article. The conviction
23:34was an outrage. And so I do think it deeply splits the country in a way we haven't seen
23:42really in a long time. And it comes on top of already existing deep divisions. Our country
23:50faces a lot of problems and they're not temporary problems. So you could say it's an unprecedented
23:57time, which is how we began the conversation today. So I'm going to end it there. Charles
24:02Lipson, thank you so much for joining me.