Forbes Senior Editor Dan Alexander joins "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the fallout from former President Trump's guilty verdict and the personality trait of Trump's being a "micro-manager" that may have led to his conviction.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is my Forbes
00:06colleague, Senior Editor Dan Alexander. Dan, thanks so much for joining me.
00:10Sure thing. Thank you for having me.
00:13We're sitting here less than 24 hours from a historic, unprecedented moment. Former President
00:18Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Can
00:24you talk to us about the impact of this verdict?
00:27Well, you know, the obvious impact is that now somebody who might become the next President
00:33of the United States is going to be a convicted felon. The political impact at this point
00:38is still unclear. You know, elections are close affairs, and this is the sort of moment
00:46that people who might otherwise be sort of tuning out the news of the day might turn
00:51their heads and say, well, and, you know, this is really a big deal. And although the
00:56vast majority of voters are not going to be impacted by this, or frankly, anything else
01:01that could come between now and November when everybody goes to the polls, there are still
01:07some people who might be swayed. If you have a slight movement, that could determine who's
01:13the next President. But we don't know. It's far too soon to even see the polls, let alone
01:19whether people are thinking about this several months from now. We won't know exactly how
01:24this has affected things until mid-November, once we have seen the election results.
01:29Definitely. I mean, we still have five months till the presidential election. So this will
01:34be baked in by then, and many things can happen. But you wrote a piece for Forbes while the
01:40jury was deliberating, and it was Trump can be a micromanager. This may lead to his conviction.
01:45First, can you explain how he has the potential to be a micromanager? And can you talk about
01:49if you thought that impacted the verdict at all?
01:53Yeah, so Trump is a man of contradictions. And one of the ways in which you see that is how he
01:58manages people. So there are certain things that he doesn't get into the details much at all. You
02:03know, he reportedly didn't want to read the president's daily brief when he was serving in
02:08the Oval Office, which is sort of the dense text that all presidents read to understand the national
02:13security concerns every single day. He seemed to prefer bullet points and images and that sort of
02:21thing. But at the same time, he does really hone in on certain things, and he's always been this
02:28way. So he might get obsessed with what the shade of a paint color is that he's painting a building,
02:35or he might get obsessed with, you know, for example, his checkbook, every penny that leaves
02:40his personal account. You know, he said for a long time, although he runs a large business,
02:44that he wants to be the person signing the checks. If you look through real estate documents,
02:50his name is the one that's, you know, at the bottom of those documents that he has signed,
02:55which is not unheard of, but isn't what every real estate developer of his magnitude does.
03:01And so he does like to be involved in certain details, although he doesn't necessarily get
03:06involved in all of the details. And that was key in this case, because this case was largely a
03:12question of, did Donald Trump know about the falsification of these business records, and did
03:18he cause the falsification of those business records? Or would he be able to say, no, it was,
03:25you know, the fault of the people in the accounts payable department, or no, it was the fault of
03:30my former lawyer, Michael Cohen, or no, it was the fault of my kids and an executive who I had
03:36to trust my business to while I was in the White House. Ultimately, the jury decided no, Donald
03:41Trump caused this and therefore convicted him on all 34 counts. I want to talk about the personal
03:47impact to Donald Trump just a little bit. As we know, now he is a convicted felon.
03:53I want to talk about how this impacts his bank account, because he faced a cash crunch months
03:58ago due to owing millions in a civil fraud case. What does this do to his net worth?
04:03Virtually nothing. Donald Trump is not footing his own legal expenses right now.
04:09You know, that's coming in through, you know, mom and pop campaign donors all over the country
04:15who are supporting his political efforts and then those political operations are
04:19in turn paying his lawyers. The amount of money involved in this case was shockingly small.
04:25Remember, this boils down to an $130,000 payment from a guy worth billions of dollars. For all of
04:31the gravity and magnitude of this decision, it's amazing that it took so little, a transaction with
04:37so little money involved to yield the first criminal convictions of a former president of
04:43the United States. The financial impact of this case is much less significant than the financial
04:50impact of the fraud case, the civil fraud case that he was on trial for last fall and ultimately
04:57in which a decision was made against him early this year, fining him more than $450 million.
05:03So let's talk about what's next. Sentencing is July 11th, right before the RNC. His team has
05:11indicated that they will appeal. So how is this process going to play out, especially with a
05:16presidential election as the backdrop? There's no precedent. Nobody knows. I mean, we don't know
05:24what all of the political ramifications are. When the appeals process plays out, you know, okay,
05:30so what happens if he loses his appeal and is sentenced but is simultaneously the sitting
05:38president of the United States? We don't know. If he does go to jail, you know, we know that the
05:43Secret Service is required to go with him. But, you know, look, the legal system takes a long time.
05:50Remember, this stems back to a conspiracy that began in 2015, payments that happened in 2016,
05:56and here we are in 2024. Although the world has known the facts of this case, most of them for
06:02eight years, we're just finally now seeing a conviction on it. And the appeals process
06:07will similarly take a long time. And so ultimately, you know, the justice system will
06:14arrive at its decision, the judge will impose a sentence, and Donald Trump will have to
06:18abide by whatever those consequences are. But that could be a few months from now,
06:23it could be a few years from now. We just don't know at this point.
06:28Something that's really interesting, that right before you and I were talking, the Trump campaign
06:33reportedly says it raised $34.8 million in small donor funds since the conviction. So are you
06:40surprised by that number? Are you surprised by Trump's response? Has anything here, because you
06:47cover Trump, his business dealings, his legal challenges so intimately, anything surprise you?
06:53You know, the amount of money coming into the coffers of his campaign is not surprising.
06:59Donald Trump is a person who has dominated the headlines now for running up on a decade.
07:05However, there are still moments where he dominates them more than he does others. And in those
07:10moments, you tend to see the people who are most committed to him rally around him. So that could
07:17be when he is indicted, it could be upon a conviction. When, for example, Truth Social's
07:24parent company went public, and there was all this chatter about that. A lot of his supporters
07:29rushed into that and bought up shares. So people get excited in certain moments and decide, you
07:35know what, I want to put my money with this guy, whether it's a donation or investment or whatever.
07:39And I think that that's what you saw yesterday. You know, there was for a while,
07:43when Red, the donating platform for the Republican side, was having connectivity issues online,
07:50suggesting that there may have been a surge of traffic. So it's not surprising that they
07:56are reporting large amounts of donations coming in. I think that the bigger question is whether
08:02that sort of surge will, how much longevity that will have. Will this be something that
08:09you know, people continue to commit to over the ensuing months? Or will like so many stories,
08:15even major stories before this, will sort of peter out and people will
08:20stop donating as much once the headlines aren't so blaring?
08:26Hearing that number, $34.8 million reportedly, also paired with controversy, Trump in the
08:33headlines has been good for Trump politically in the past. Do you think that in any way,
08:40him becoming a convicted felon, him saying, hey, the system is rigged,
08:44do you think this plays politically well for him?
08:49You know, it's hard to know. But remember, there are two different parts of US elections,
08:54you have primaries, and you have the general election. And in a primary where you're going to
08:59be, you know, voted on by fellow Republicans, you could see it helping him, but he's already
09:04won the primary. So it doesn't, it doesn't actually matter. You know, if you were in a
09:08close race for a primary, you might see, oh, his base is more consolidated, and therefore more
09:13fervently behind him, and that's gonna help, but he locked up the primary long ago. So that doesn't
09:18really, really work there. And then in the general election, you know, you're much more appealing to
09:24a broad group of people. And so, you know, I think what it's going to do is sort of crystallize the
09:30feelings that people already had about Donald Trump. And so if they felt like he was aggrieved,
09:35and like he needed them in the corner, and he needed all the support that he could get,
09:39they're probably going to feel that even more. If they felt like he was a criminal who, you know,
09:46had bashed through all these norms, they're now going to say, look, see, now he is a convicted
09:50criminal. And it's just as we thought. So I think it's more likely to sort of solidify people's
09:56opinions. And as I said earlier, the big question is whether it sways even a half a percent,
10:021% of those, that very small group of people who still might be up for grabs.
10:09He faces an additional 54 felony charges in his three remaining criminal cases.
10:15So Dan, what are you watching out for next?
10:19Well, I don't think that any of those cases are likely to happen before the election. But
10:23obviously, the political consequences is something that we are going to get some
10:28information on relatively soon. Once polls start coming out, you can see whether this had any
10:33impact. So that'll be one thing to look for. And as you move, you know, closer to the actual
10:39election day, you know, I think you start to say, okay, is this something that has legs? Are people
10:45still talking about the fact that he was convicted? Or like so many stories, does it sort of get,
10:51you know, washed away? I mean, think of all of the controversies that seem like, wow,
10:55this is an earth shattering moment over the last eight years with Donald Trump.
10:59And many of them simply people don't remember anymore, or if they do, they sort of bake it in.
11:05So I think how long this is, you know, is a dominating part of the conversation
11:10will be interesting to see. And then, of course, if he's elected, well, then we're,
11:15you know, in for more unprecedented moments. Okay, so there are two federal investigations,
11:22are those going to be immediately shut down? If so, what's gonna be the blowback from that?
11:26There's also another investigation in Georgia, in which he's been indicted. And how does that
11:33play out? Does that go to trial while he's the sitting president? So there are all of these
11:38different things in play right now that we're just gonna have to see what happens over the
11:44next few years. But there's gonna be no shortage of things to look out for.
11:48Something that you said that stuck out to me was we're in store for more unprecedented moments.
11:54And you also said, like, looking back at the past eight years, I mean, there has been moment
11:58history making moment with Donald Trump with chaos and controversy, because you've covered him so
12:04heavily the past years. Does that work in his favor that he is creating so many unprecedented
12:10moments that it's not at the shock value is gone for a lot of Americans?
12:15Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and it's not just that the shock value is gone, because they've seen
12:21controversy before. It's also that Donald Trump is a master at blunting controversy,
12:28and making it into something that what would be death blows for, you know, every other
12:33politician in the world, just sort of bounce off of him after a little while. Remember,
12:40this case, this hush money case, comes from a payment and a reimbursement involved with that
12:46payment that came right on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape, which large parts of the Republican
12:53Party of the country thought was going to end Donald Trump's campaign. That was in October of
12:582016. And then the next month, he defeats Hillary Clinton and becomes the president. So that's just
13:06one instance in which Donald Trump's been able to move past this stuff. And as that's been
13:12happening, all of these different controversies, he's, you know, stiff armed one and another,
13:17he's also been very actively working to discredit the institutions that most people look to as
13:27neutral arbiters of what's going on. So at one point, that was the press, and certainly the
13:34justice system. And Donald Trump, even before he was convicted here said, you know, even Mother
13:41Teresa would get convicted on based on these instructions. And that's a very clear sign
13:47of sort of the master at work, saying, you know, I'm delegitimizing this process, before we even
13:54know the results of this process, as an insurance policy for if the verdict goes the wrong way,
14:00as it did for him. And after the verdicts, there were memes floating around on social media
14:05with Trump and Jesus Trump and Mother Teresa. So that messaging has been going around since
14:12the verdict. Dan Alexander, per usual, thank you for the conversation. Sure thing. Thank you.