Just 48% of Americans believe that Donald Trump should go to jail for his "hush money" conviction, despite the efforts of Democrats to convince voters that he committed a serious offense.
The Associated Press poll found that 50% of Americans believe Trump should not face jail when he is sentenced in September - and just 46% approve of Trump's conviction.
Since Trump was found guilty on May 30 of vague crimes involving "hush money" payments, Democrats have repeatedly attacked Trump as a "convicted felon."
At the same time, Democrats have pointed to Hunter Biden's guilty conviction to argue that the justice system that convicted Trump is even-handed. But Americans clearly see the two cases differently.
The Associated Press poll found that roughly 60% of voters believe Hunter Biden should face time behind bars for his felony gun conviction. The results suggest that Americans believe Hunter Biden's crime is more tangible than Trump's alleged bookkeeping offense.
“I don’t think the particular crime deserves time,” said Christopher Smith, a 43-year-old independent in Tennessee. “I see what he did, lying on business records because of an affair, as more of a moral crime."
Unsurprisingly, about 8 in 10 Democrats think Trump should face prison time but only 49% of independents say the same. 46% say he should not.
Only four in ten Americans are confident that Trump was treated fairly by the judge, prosecutors, and jurors, and just 46% of Americans approve of the conviction.
The findings mesh with Trump's argument that the case against him was politically motivated.
It appears there is more of a public consensus that Hunter Biden actually broke the law: 60% of Americans support Hunter's conviction for lying about his drug use to purchase a gun.
The poll is just more bad news for Democrats, who are already facing a possible wipeout this November as Joe Biden crumbles in public following his debate disaster.
Biden has latched onto Trump's felony conviction to attack his rival, but the public apparently isn't convinced that Trump's "crime" is a huge deal.
Trump's sentencing was set for July 11 but has been delayed until September after Trump asked the judge to toss the verdict.
The survey polled 1,088 U.S. adults from June 20-24.
Hunter Biden is more influential than ever as his embattled father alienates fellow Democrats who are desperate to replace him.
Since Joe's debate debacle, his son has risen to become the "proxy commander-in-chief," the New York Post's Miranda Devine reports.
Hunter Biden's personal fortunes have always been closely linked with his father's political status, but that connection has never been so clear as it is now, with his father facing the potential end of his career.
Since Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance last month, Hunter has been a regular presence at White House meetings and events including a Medal of Honor ceremony. Hunter Biden has even consulted his father on writing speeches.
While he has often been dismissed as a reckless fool, Hunter Biden should not be underestimated when his self-interest is threatened, Devine warns Democrats.
Hunter Biden was convicted of felony gun crimes in June and is facing another trial for tax evasion in the fall.
Despite what many think, "he is highly intelligent, manipulative, methodical and always out for his own ends, which, now more than ever, depend on his father maintaining power," Devine writes.
While Joe Biden has pledged not to pardon his son, many are skeptical of that commitment, especially as Biden throws away his 2020 pledge to be a "bridge" candidate. Instead, Biden has planted himself firmly behind the Resolute desk and dared Democrats to drag him away.
“Knowing them on a familial level, they [will] have to be dragged out,” said one former friend of the Bidens.
“I think the Bidens are going to fight all the way into the ground,” said another. “[They] only give a s- -t about themselves and the Bidens.”
Hunter Biden may also see his father's crisis as a test of "his leadership skills and believe that his manifest destiny is playing out," another friend told Devine.
The drama is not only political, but deeply personal. The first son is protective of his father and resentful toward the Obamas for putting him down through the years, Devine noted.
Joe Biden echoed those feelings of resentment in an interview Monday where he bashed Democrat "elites" for trying to push him out.
Needless to say, Democrats are in quite a pickle.
In the wake of President Joe Biden's embarrassing, disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump last month, the fallout for his campaign and the White House is growing by the day.
An unexpected but definitely unsurprising scandal to emerge since the debate involves a radio host who said she received pre-written questions to ask the president in a post-debate interview.
According to Fox News, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, host of “The Source” in Philadelphia, admitted during a CNN interview that Biden's team sent a pre-approved list of questions for her to ask.
The radio host said she "approved" of four of the questions.
Fox News explained what the questions involved:
The questions centered around Biden's accomplishments, debate performance, progress in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, what's at stake in the election, and what he would say to voters who are considering not voting in the presidential election.
The admission by the radio host ultimately led to her no longer having a job with WURD, a Philadelphia-based Black-owned radio station.
"On July 3, the first post-debate interview with President Joe Biden was arranged and negotiated independently by WURD Radio host Andrea Lawful-Sanders without knowledge, consultation or collaboration with WURD management," WURD president and CEO, Sara M. Lomax, said in a statement.
She emphasized that the station was not a "mouthpiece" for the Biden administration or any other campaign.
Lomax explained in the statement that the host and the company "mutually agreed" to part ways.
"The interview featured pre-determined questions provided by the White House, which violates our practice of remaining an independent media outlet accountable to our listeners. As a result, Ms. Lawful-Sanders and WURD Radio have mutually agreed to part ways, effective immediately," the statement read.
Lawful-Sanders's situation wasn't the only one, as another radio host admitted shortly after that debacle that he, too, had received a pre-approved list of questions to ask the president.
Fox News noted:
Wisconsin radio station host Earl Ingram confirmed that he was given five questions to ask Biden during their recent chat and wasn’t able to get through all of them before the interview ended.
The White House defended the practice of sending the pre-approved questions.
However, the excuse was laughable, as the interviews were supposed to show concerned voters that Biden is able to take tough questions on the fly and prove he's not cognitively challenged. Oops.
For many years now, many have believed that First Lady Jill Biden has been a key figure in running the show at the White House in place of her cognitively challenged husband, President Joe Biden.
That seems to be more true than ever, given recent events, especially in the wake of the disastrous presidential debate President Biden suffered through with former President Donald Trump, who cleaned his old clock.
According to the New York Post, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly blasted the first lady as a "power hungry" and criticized her for doing everything she can, to Joe Biden's detriment, to keep him in power so that she can continue running a "shadow presidency."
Kelly held nothing back as she explained her theory to Piers Morgan on his online television show "Piers Morgan Uncensored."
In the wake of his embarrassingly bad debate, Jilly Biden has reportedly been the one key figure to encourage her husband to resist the growing, intense pressure for him to drop out of the 2024 race.
Among many examples of Jill Biden seemingly running the show, Kelly pointed to a June 2021 photo of Jill Biden that was captioned with "prepping for the G7." Kelly thinks Jill Biden was far out of her lane even at that moment.
"She’s not the damn president. Get out of the chair," Kelly said of the photo. “No one wants you at the G7. No one elected you to lead us politically.”
Prepping for the G7. pic.twitter.com/drPmb2vBwI
— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) June 9, 2021
Kelly also slammed the first lady for insisting on being called "doctor" after she received a doctor of education degree (EdD).
"Why does she insist on it? Because she’s power hungry. Because she has a small, fractured ego that she needs built up," Kelly continued. "The only people who get to be called doctor, legitimately, I understand, no disparaging of the degree, are medical doctors."
Many from within the Democratic Party have called on Biden to step aside -- or be removed via the 25th Amendment -- in a bid to give the party a fighting chance at beating Trump in November.
After the debate performance, Biden lost any shred of ability to inspire voters that he had left, mostly because he was exposed to the nation during the debate as he gaffed, stuttered, and lost his train of thought on more than one occasion.
Some have suggested that VP Kamala Harris might eventually be the head of the 2024 ticket for Democrats, while the White House has insisted that Joe Biden is sticking it out.
Only time will tell what happens, but it's clear that Jill Biden very much wants her husband in power, so that she can remain in power behind the scenes.
Kamala Harris will be the Democrats' presidential nominee if Joe Biden drops out, according to Democrat Howard Dean.
Dean, who ran for president in 2004, told CNN that Democrats will rally behind Harris rather than risk a chaotic "bloodbath."
"So what I - there's not going to be chaos at the convention. If Biden doesn't run, and this is totally his decision, it's going to be Harris," Dean said. "And that's just the way it is."
Speculation about Biden's future is running rampant since his disastrous debate performance on CNN.
Some Democrats have warmed to Harris as a logical solution to the party's Biden problem. She is his direct successor, after all, and nominating her could help Democrats avoid a bruising intraparty squabble.
Her status as the first black female vice president is also seen as a feather in her cap, given the weight Democrats place on identity politics.
Despite rumors of a brutal knife fight, Dean predicted that there won't be a "bloodbath" to replace Biden because Democrats don't have the time for a chaotic open convention.
"But there's not going to be a big fight at the convention. There will be a few people, like Dean Phillips, who put his name in and got what he deserves. But it's going to be cooked."
Dean said it's "just as well" that Harris get the nomination because she polls better than any other Democratic candidate. He appeared to be citing a CNN poll that found Harris polling better against Donald Trump than any other Democrat including Biden.
Harris also has institutional advantages since she is already connected to the Biden campaign, Dean said. She can inherit Biden's war chest in a way other candidates just can't.
"Harris - there's some financial reasons for this. Harris is a signatory to the Biden-Harris campaign, so the money can go to her. It can't willy-nilly go to whoever else might end up - but there's just not going to be a bloodbath. There's not enough time for there to be a bloodbath."
"There isn't a single candidate other than Harris who can muster the organizational ability to run a presidential campaign, because she's already got that ability because she's been running this campaign or running in this campaign for months."
For now, Harris and Biden are putting on a united front, and Biden has insisted he is not dropping out.
Liberals aren't having an easy time with Donald Trump's recent winning streak. One journalist for the BBC went so far as to call for Trump to be murdered after Supreme Court handed him a huge victory.
69-year-old David Aaronovitch, host of BBC Radio 4's Briefing Room, called on Joe Biden to have Trump killed, suggesting Biden can do so legally in light of the Supreme Court's historic ruling on immunity.
“If I was Biden I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security,” he wrote on X.
As the backlash started to come in, Aaaronovitch said he was only joking and the "far right" was triggered.
"There’s now a far-right pile on suggesting that my tweet about the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity is an incitement to violence when it’s plainly a satire. So I’m deleting it. If nothing else though it’s given me a map of some the daftest people on this site," he wrote.
The back end of Aaronovitch's original post calling Trump "a threat to America's security" sounds like an earnest statement, not a joke. In any event, it's a twisted thing to joke about.
Besides being deeply disturbing, Aaronovitch's "take" is profoundly unoriginal.
Many, many liberals reacted to the court's ruling with the same "joke" that Joe Biden can now legally murder Trump.
Some aren't cloaking their malice in irony. Orange Is The New Black actress Lea DeLaria went on a deranged rant demanding that Biden "take out" Trump, whom she compared to Hitler.
"Trump is Hitler, and this is 1940. Take him the f*** out," she said.
The court's own liberal wing wrote a pair of hand-wringing dissents claiming the Supreme Court had placed presidents "above the law."
Obama appointee Sonia Sotomayor directly invoked the scenario of the President ordering SEAL Team Six to take out political rivals.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, dismissed the dissents as "fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals." Roberts also accused the dissent of ignoring a more realistic danger of presidents prosecuting one another in a vicious cycle.
The court's ruling is widely seen as dashing any chance of Trump being prosecuted for January 6th before the election, so liberals are very angry to say the least.
The Supreme Court's ruling came days after Joe Biden imploded in his debate with Trump, sending Democrats into a panic.