fight ahead. another hour of velshi starts now. good morning. there have been many attempts to hold donald trump accountable for his actions over the years. he has been criminally indicted multiple times since leaving the white house in just the e past couple of years he has been found liable for sexually abusing and prodding writer e. jean carroll. now, he is the first former american president to be convicted of a felony. he will be sentenced on july 11th, just two weeks after his first presidential debate against joe biden and one week before the gop officially makes him its presidential nominee at the republican national convention in milwaukee. and his sentencing, he faces the possibility of being penalized with a fine, probation, or prison time. but none of the efforts to hold trump accountable so far have succeeded in humbling the present or changing his behavior or curbing his attacks on the rule of law. he is the same polarizing and boorish politician we have alw
worked. there is a pivotal election five months and four days from today. one of the candidates will dbe convicted felon. but, at this point, it is still unclear how or if what happened this week will change the dynamics of the race. joining me now art david a. graham and susan, the co-author of the divider and, david, let me start with you. one the trial began people thought about this case like ith was the runt of the litter of the trump cases. it was not directly linked to the attempt to overturn the election. but that juries have returned a historic guilty verdict. what you think is going to happen as a result of that? welcome i think it is really striking how quickly the returned and how convincing the case they made was. i agree that this was maybe a lesser case and i found that
sort of under noted incident little more than a week ago in which speaker mike johnson s house of representatives, they literally prohibited jim mcgovern, the top democrat on the rules committee, from even mentioning the fact of donald trump s indictments and of the cases pending before them on the house on the grounds it was insulting to the personality of the presumptive nominee. that is right. just the facts of the case. and i looked this up. there is a crs report that shows this is extraordinarily basically unprecedented behavior and house of representatives. even before the conviction, they were saying it was out of order in mike johnson s congress even to mention the fact of the leader s indictments. david, you know, we are often trying to parse what effect this will have on the election and people s thinking but there was something that caught our eye in which you wrote this was the first
defense of donald trump. and that, i think, is something that takes us to a really next level scary place. and the response i thought when there was one republican who spoke out giving the old clichis. to david s points, let s respect the rule of law and the system here. this is how america works. kind of clichi hold stuff. the former governor of maryland was actually trashed and called out by his fellow republicans. utah senator mike lee basically said do not respect the verdict. do not respect the system. david, it is not just lawmakers. here s the interesting thing for people who have ran for office to help trump survive this politically. we have heard from a couple of wealthy donors and billionaires have come back into the trump fold. people who have been critical in the past. this is how he likes it. donald trump, he has not