In Wisconsin, Trump conviction sparks mixed reactions

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Donald Trump on Thursday became the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime when a New York jury found him guilty on all counts in a criminal hush money trial, which centered on allegations that he falsified business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn star ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Trump will be sentenced just four days before the Republican national convention is set to begin in Milwaukee, a development that is all but certain to shift the tenor of the nominating event in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

Trump in 2016 was the first Republican in more than 30 years to win the state during a presidential year. He lost it four years later and threw the state’s politics into turmoil as he sought to overturn his defeat in courtrooms and through baseless claims about the state’s system of voting.

On Thursday, voters’ reactions to the guilty verdicts were as divided as the state’s politics in interviews across the Badger State.

“I’m kind of speechless. I didn’t think he would be convicted,” Damon Anderson, 27, said in Milwaukee. “I was rooting for the guy, a little bit.” Anderson said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020 and does not think he will vote in November.

“I don’t think I’ll ever vote again in my life,” Anderson said, adding that in 2016 his mother took him to the polling place to vote. “I wrote my own name in. I had to pretend that I was doing something up there. My mom wasn’t going to let me leave without watching me fill out the thing … it had my name, and my brother’s name for vice president.”

‘What game are we playing’ in allowing Donald Trump to run for president as a convicted felon?

With the Republican National Convention coming to Milwaukee in July, Anderson questions if Trump will be the party’s nominee.

“They can’t (nominate him) anymore, right? Now he has a conviction. He can’t become the president,” Anderson said, adding he thought Trump shouldn’t have run with a case pending against him. “If they allow Trump to still run, now what game are we playing? What’s really going on? It’s even more confusing than it was before, and I think that’s terrifying.”

In Green Bay, Hannah Neece told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel she followed the trial closely but didn’t overwhelm herself with it.

“It’s impressive to me that the court was able to find an impartial jury. When following this case, I felt more detached than previous controversies with Trump because I truly believed he wouldn’t be found guilty, let alone guilty on all counts,” said Neece, who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

Neece, 31, said she was shocked by the verdict and remains curious about what it will mean for the November election.“I’m still convinced sentencing will be a mess to witness, but I believe and trust the jury’s decision and think that it was certainly the right call,” Neece said.

In nearby Appleton, 84-year-old Dorothy Ternes said “Justice must prevail, and it has,” just after the verdict was released.

Waupaca County Republican Party leader calls verdict ‘misuse of judicial system’

Joel Bartel, who works in medical equipment sales and is the chairman of the Waupaca County Republican Party, called the verdict a “misuse of our judicial system” and claimed it could lead to conflict.

“I believe this is a misuse of the judicial system, and it’s going to drive a wedge further between Republicans and Democrats,” Bartel, 50, said.

He said the ruling will create “more hostility” between the two parties.

The Republican Party of Brown County similarly slammed the verdict in a statement calling the verdict an effort from Democrats to “silence, suppress, and even jail their political opponents.”

“This kangaroo court verdict must now become a symbol for all Americans of the corrupt, immoral, and violent left-wing radicalism that has made its way from the ivory towers of American universities to our institutions and courthouses,” the group said. “If Americans do not unite to fight this corruption now, it will be the end of our country.”

College students react to the Donald Trump hush money trial verdict

On University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus, first-year graduate students Marian Azeem-Angel and Rusal Ferus were sitting at the Memorial Union terrace when they saw the news of the guilty verdicts.

“My friends from out of state just texted me, saying, ‘It finally happened,’” said Ferus, who grew up in Georgia and followed news about the Trump campaign’s election conspiracy charges there. “Thank God something came out of that and it wasn’t just a whole lot of deliberation for nothing.”

During their conversation, a woman at an adjacent table reading the news for the first time audibly exclaimed, “Holy shit.”

Both voted for Biden in 2020 and plan to again in the fall.

‘Travesty of justice’: Ron Johnson, other top Wisconsin Republicans blast jury’s decision

The verdict was widely panned by Republicans as political retribution from Democrats, with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson calling the trial’s outcome a “travesty of justice” and GOP congressman Derrick Van Orden in the 3rd Congressional District describing Thursday as a “black day.”

Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman Brian Schimming dismissed the ruling as a “weaponization of the federal legal system” from a “sham trial.”

Asked whether he thinks the ruling will benefit Trump politically, Schimming accused Democrats of floating baseless impeachment threats since the former president’s 2016 campaign announcement, and said he expects the decision will be appealed.

“But somebody suggested awhile ago that they may have guaranteed his victory today, and that might be,” he said.

The state’s longest-serving governor, former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, said the verdict will be decisive in 2024 presidential race.

“I think it’s going to pretty much cement Donald Trump being elected the next President of the United States. People see this trial as a political vendetta against Trump by the Biden administration, and I think people are gonna vote accordingly.”

What will happen at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee?

Thompson said the tone of the GOP convention will shift after Trump’s sentencing.

“I think so. I think it’s gonna be, I think everything is just gonna — This is just gonna increase the hyper-bitterness, the hyper partisanship that we’re witnessing in our country,” Thompson said. “This is not, in any way, going to help ameliorate the political conditions in this country, which I find really serious. For somebody who has spent my whole life in this arena, (it’s) very sad.”

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