Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, attends his criminal trial at the New York State Supreme Court in New York, New York, Wednesday, May, 29, 2024. (Doug Mills/Pool via REUTERS)
Moyer, a veteran of a handful of Democratic presidential campaigns, emphasized that "every little development in this race could push voters one way or another. Nobody wants to be a convicted felon when you’re putting your name on the ballot."
Longtime Republican consultant Colin Reed acknowledged that it's "never a good thing to be convicted, in life or politics, of a crime."
"But the old rules and the old conventional way of thinking have never really applied to Donald Trump throughout his life as a political figure," Reed, a veteran of multiple GOP presidential campaigns, added.
"It remains to be seen if this is a political anvil or if it’s just another chapter in a long saga of ups and downs for a guy who survived seemingly insurmountable political odds before," Reed said.
Trump was charged with falsifying business records in relation to payments during the 2016 election that he made to Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about his alleged affair with the adult film actress. Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 in return for her silence about allegations of an affair with Trump in 2006. Prosecutors argued that this amounted to illegally seeking to influence the 2016 election.
The big political question moving forward is how the outcome of former President Donald Trump's criminal trial will impact his 2024 election rematch with President Biden. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) (Win McNamee/Michael M. Santiago)
Daron Shaw, a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas who also serves as a member of the Fox News Decision Team and the Republican partner on the Fox News Poll, noted that "prior to 2020, no one would have thought that a candidate could survive a criminal conviction."
"But times and circumstances have evolved. And while the specific findings of the jury could matter, I think there is a sense that a conviction in this case would not appreciably change the dynamics of the race," Shaw emphasized.
Both pointed to the fact that "attitudes are so set in concrete" regarding both the former Republican president and his Democratic successor in the White House.
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