The hush money trial was a process “that was run with incredible integrity,” said Chris Hayes Thursday night following Donald Trump’s guilty verdict. He continued, “And basically, I think that the kind of liberal democratic order we’re trying to hold onto here rises or falls on our ability to agree to fair or neutral processes that we’re all subject to”—an ability he’s not sure the Republican Party still values.
“What we’re seeing in the Republican Party is basically rejecting” the idea that democracy guarantees a fair process, not a favorable outcome, he added. For the GOP, “if you lose an election, the elections no longer legitimate. If you’re convicted at trial, then the system is no longer legitimate.”
That perspective is “a deeply held part of Donald Trump’s personal view of the world” that is “authentically held, in his own strange way.” But now that perspective has “metastasized to take over the party,” Hayes said.
The result, he concluded, is Republicans removing themselves from “the consensual collaborative enterprise we’re all engaged in.”
Donald Trump was convicted on Thursday of all 34 counts of criminal fraud by a Manhattan jury of seven men and five women. This marked the first time a former president was convicted of a crime.
An infuriated Trump was immediately defiant following the verdict. He told reporters, “This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a corrupt judge. It’s a rigged trial, it’s a disgrace. They wouldn’t give us a venue change, we had 5 percent in this jurisdiction, in this area. The real verdict will be Nov. 5, by the people. … I’m a very innocent man.”
Trump’s claims that “the system” is “rigged” against him are many and varied. In 2016, he claimed the “rigged system” was the reason Hillary Clinton was not charged for using a private email server as Secretary of State, and in 2021 he called for a televised debate to continue to parrot his claims the 2020 election was “stolen and rigged” against him.
In fact, those claims are the basis for another federal case against Trump. In August, he was charged with illegally conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
At the time, he wrote on his Truth Social network: “I am now going to Washington, D.C., to be arrested for having challenged a corrupt, rigged and stolen election. It is a great honor, because I am being arrested for you. Make America great again!!!”
Also on Thursday, Rachel Maddow said she believed delegitimizing the legal system in the U.S. the bedrock of the rest of his presidential campaign. While addressing the question Trump’s campaign will have to address—why should Americans vote for a convicted felon?—she said, “His answer will be that he’s only a convicted felon because the American legal system is illegitimate, and ‘Vote for me and I’ll destroy it’, being the implication. I mean, this is where we are right?”
“That he’s not running against Joe Biden. He’s running against the American system of government, and that will become more acute.”
Watch the clip from All In with Chris Hayes in the video above.
