Republicans react to jury verdict
We're now getting some reaction from Republicans on the verdict.
Senator John Thune from South Dakota said the outcome of the trial has a "cumulative effect" on how Trump is viewed within Republican circles as a candidate.
"People are gonna have to decide whether they want to deal with all the drama," Thune told CBS News.
Senator John Cornyn from Texas said that he doesn't believe Trump can get elected as the next US president in 2024.
"You can't win a general election with just your base," he said.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas and one of Trump's rivals in the Republican primary ahead of the 2024 election, said that the jury verdict should be treated with seriousness.
"It is another example of the indefensible behaviour of Donald Trump," Hutchinson said.
The political fallout
A jury of nine New Yorkers has concluded that it is more likely than not that Donald Trump sexually abused a woman in the 1990s.
While that may not make a dent in Trump’s base within the Republican Party, where his supporters view the US legal system with scepticism and have stood by him through all manners of adversity, it is a ruling that could sting if he wins the Republican nomination in 2024.
In the 2020 presidential election – as well as the 2018 and 2022 congressional midterms – many suburban voters, particularly women, recoiled from Trump’s brand of brash politics.
A finding that Trump sexually abused and defamed E Jean Carroll – as well as his belligerent performance during a taped deposition for the case – can only push those kinds of voters farther away from him.
Perhaps that will take a political toll on the former president’s re-election chances. At the very least, it is another historic first for a former president who already has one criminal indictment and possibly others to come.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-65502076