Trump’s Hush Money Trial Is Petty. Maybe That’s a Good Thing.

Small crimes are sometimes more humiliating than large ones.

Many pundits and legal experts have argued that the charges in Trump’s New York trial do not warrant a trial. At the very least, there’s a consensus that the issues are less weighty than those in Trump’s other trials—which focus on the former president’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election, and his mishandling of top secret documents. He is accused of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments; he could be sentenced to up to four years in prison, but it’s more likely he will receive probation.

As I’ve written before, the hush money trial is directly about election interference to subvert democracy; it’s about serious crimes and serious issues. Still, it's true that sentences and crimes in the other trials are more dramatic. As a result, the fact that the NY prosecution may be the only one before the election feels like a failure to reckon with the full extent of Trump’s criminality. His delay tactics have worked; the public will probably not see the most important charges against him litigated in court.

And yet, the spectacle of triviality and small-scale meanness on display in the New York trial may in some ways be worse for Trump and MAGA than a trial with more dramatic high principles might be.