Convicted felon Donald Trump’s first words after the historic jury verdict were predictably defiant: “The real verdict is going to be November 5 by the people.”
The Biden-Harris campaign’s communication director issued a statement (perhaps written in anticipation of a hung jury) that didn’t challenge that point: “Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”
The rest of us need not accept this assumption. If the Republican Party had any sense of decency and self-respect, they wouldn’t either. For the good of the country, Donald Trump should drop out the 2024 presidential race.
A president should be of decent character. A president should be entrusted to faithfully execute the law. The trial made clear that Trump is not of decent character and has no fealty to the law. He is a man who had an extramarital affair while his wife was pregnant. He is a man who used a tabloid newspaper to falsely smear his rivals, skirting campaign contribution laws. He is a man who didn’t think twice about falsifying records to cover up his transgressions.
Quibbling about the severity of the crime—falsifying business records in the first degree is not as grave as conspiracy to defraud the United States, to mention just one of Trump’s outstanding indictments—obscures the fact that Trump committed a crime, and did so in a self-serving pursuit of political power.
We know that the Constitution allows a convicted felon to serve as President, but it also decrees that a president “shall be removed” upon “Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” A felony is literally a high crime. Trump would be subject to impeachment and conviction the second after his inauguration. A two-thirds Senate vote for conviction is extremely unlikely, but to have a president who unquestionably qualifies for impeachment and conviction would wrack America with divisions more intense than we suffered in the last Trump presidency, perhaps more intense than any since the Civil War.
Trump still has the opportunity to commit an uncharacteristically decent act and spare America from having a felon on the ballot. To refuse to step aside–in favor of someone who shares his policy positions but not his criminal record–would further reveal Trump is far more interested in his personal ambitions than his policy positions.
The Republican Party has no obligation to condemn America to even deeper polarization. As Marc Novicoff wrote in the Washington Monthly last year, Republican National Committee rules currently bind convention delegates to support the candidate who won their state primaries. But parties can change their rules. Now would be a good time. For Republicans to recommit to a convicted felon would further corrode whatever is left of the Grand Old Party’s intellectual foundation.
For months, our media was saturated with calls from bored pundits and anxious Democrats for President Joe Biden to drop out of the race–not because of any violations of law or deficiencies of character, but because he’s old and slightly behind in most polls. The grounds justifying a Trump withdrawal are a bit more firm.
Since Trump is so shameless and so many Republicans are terrified of Trump’s rabid followers, I do not expect months of similar commentary calling for Trump to drop out. But I hope my expectations are wrong.
Trump should drop out not because it would be good for Republicans, or good for Democrats, but because it would be good for America. Everyone who isn’t a cultish devotee of Trump knows it. And every one of them should have the courage to say it.
