Donald Trump has warned that sending him to prison could prove a “breaking point” for his supporters — remarks that will fuel concerns of political violence around the US presidential election on November 5.
Trump told “Fox and Friends Weekend” in a taped interview that aired Sunday, “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.” He did not expand on his thought of how the public might react.
Trump reflected on the conclusion of the first-ever criminal trial of an American president, saying, “It was a tough ending.
Even as he is the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate in the November election against President Joe Biden, the Democrat who defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump faces the possibility of being placed on probation or sentenced up to four years in prison.
Trump attorney Will Scharf told “This Week” show, “I don’t think President Trump is going to end up being subject to any sentence whatsoever.” He said Trump’s legal team is willing to appeal the verdict “all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to vindicate President Trump’s rights.”
Trump’s sentencing is set for July 11, just days ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention where the party faithful plans to nominate him as the party’s standard bearer for the third straight election cycle.
Trump, 77, said that in “many ways” he thought the trial was “tougher on my family” than himself, lamenting the effect on his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, who did not, unlike three of his adult children, attend any of the court sessions. Some of the most pointed testimony focused on two women and their claims of sexual relations with Trump a decade before the 2016 election, liaisons he denied.
