Opinion | Three Opinion Writers on the Trump Verdict: ‘If We Think There’s a Trump Cult Already …’

French: I think, Michelle, the precise legal word for that argument is “bonkers.” [Laughter]

It’s just wild. We all remember it. This was the biggest story in America, and this was the first time that you began to see Republicans fleeing the campaign after the convention. After the Republicans consolidated at the convention, you began to see cracks in the facade after the “Access Hollywood” tape.

That was a nine-alarm fire. That was an emergency for the campaign.

Healy: And yet he held it together. And that goes to why I felt surprised by this. It touches on things that you two have both raised now. While our institutions have often held up, where —

Goldberg: Well, I think our legal institutions —

Healy: Our legal institutions have held up. That’s the thing — the ability of Donald Trump and his team to have a playbook for almost any situation where at the end of the day, even if reputations are scarred and people are thrown under the bus, he is still able to evade accountability. I only really saw that in the 2020 election, ultimately at the ballot box.

And I’ve just found myself thinking, and maybe it’s a little jaded, but you get 12 jurors in a room, hearing the evidence, that there may be just one or two that see a former president in the dock and want such clear, smoking-gun-level, “Law & Order” drama that just really kind of nails him —

Goldberg: But they had it.

Healy: They had it, but they —

Goldberg: They had smoking — I mean they —

Healy: But they didn’t literally have Donald Trump saying a version of what he said in Georgia, which was, you know: Find me the umpteen thousand votes I need to get —