--- title: We're All Watching Trump Try to Talk His Way Out of This description: "Everybody says there's no crime here,” Trump said in a rambling Trump Tower speech that decried "multilingual schools" for some reason canonical: https://time.com/6984366/donald-trump-guilty-2024-election/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-05-31T19:14:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T07:43:01.629Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump Thinks He Can Talk His Way Out of This. He Might Be Right og:description: "Everybody says there's no crime here,” Trump said in a rambling Trump Tower speech that decried "multilingual schools" for some reason og:url: https://time.com/6984366/donald-trump-guilty-2024-election/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt048685e88a6b486c/698a5775929fad698dbfc981/GettyImages-2154807733.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: President Trump Holds A Press Conference At Trump Tower Day After Guilty Verdict og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump Thinks He Can Talk His Way Out of This. He Might Be Right twitter:description: "Everybody says there's no crime here,” Trump said in a rambling Trump Tower speech that decried "multilingual schools" for some reason twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt048685e88a6b486c/698a5775929fad698dbfc981/GettyImages-2154807733.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 video:duration: 04:37 video:published: 2024-05-31 section: politics topics: Trump trial reaction, gag order, claims of rigged trial, judge criticism, decision not to testify, statute of limitations, small-dollar fundraising, planned appeal, 2024 presidential campaign, timing of prosecution genre: news, speech tones: defiant, combative, aggrieved, accusatory emotions: anger (high), defiance (high), grievance (high), pride (medium) sentiment: negative audience: news followers, political observers, voters, legal watchers people: Donald Trump, Judge Marchan, George Washington organizations: Southern District content_suitability: politics [00:02-04:37]; crime [01:07-04:25] transcript_source: publisher captions transcript_reviewed: not applicable ---  # Donald Trump Thinks He Can Talk His Way Out of This. He Might Be Right > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=5f827d28-3c94-4839-a795-059df8a00857&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Donald Trump Responds to Guilty Verdict by Falsely Blasting a 'Rigged Trial' [Watch (HLS stream): Donald Trump Responds to Guilty Verdict by Falsely Blasting a 'Rigged Trial'](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/nKb0N5f7.m3u8) (4:37)  _Published 2024-05-31. Donald Trump attacked the judge and the star witness in his criminal hush money trial and again tried to undermine New York's criminal justice system on Friday, the day after he was convicted on 34 felony charges._ Description, summary, key points, chapters, key quotes, questions and transcript, where present, were produced automatically from the video or its captions and were not reviewed. ## Summary The video presents Donald Trump's remarks to reporters in which he criticizes the trial, the judge and the proceedings as unfair. He describes limits placed on his defense, explains why he did not testify, and argues the case was revived for political reasons and timing. He cites a record small-dollar fundraising total, says he will appeal, and describes himself as determined to keep fighting. ## Key points - Trump says he is under a gag order imposed by a judge he says cannot put two sentences together. (00:13) - He says the defense was not allowed to use its election expert under any circumstances. (00:23) - He says he wanted a venue change and a different judge, and did not get either. (01:10) - He says he wanted to testify, but argues the judge would have allowed prosecutors to question him about everything he was ever involved in. (01:26) - He claims the case was dropped by every agency and by the Southern District, then revived after he announced his run for president. (02:38) - He says the prosecution could have brought the case seven years ago and claims they missed the statute of limitations. (03:07) - He says small-money donors raised a record $39 million in about ten hours, which he calls possibly unprecedented in politics. (03:29) - He says he will appeal on many grounds, including claims that the judge barred witnesses and called the judge a tyrant. (04:14) ## Chapters - [00:00 to 00:36] Opening claims about gag order and unfairness. Trump says the case could happen to anyone and criticizes the gag order and the exclusion of his election expert. - [00:36 to 01:23] Attacks on judge and treatment of witnesses. He describes the judge as appearing soft but being a devil and says defense witnesses were treated harshly while the government got what it wanted. - [01:23 to 02:15] Why he did not testify. He explains that he wanted to testify but says the judge would have let prosecutors ask about everything in his past. - [02:15 to 03:15] Politics, timing and statute of limitations. He thanks the crowd outside and argues the revived case was politically timed and came too late. - [03:15 to 04:14] Record small-dollar fundraising. He reports a record $39 million raised from small donors in about ten hours and says the verdict may backfire. - [04:14 to 04:37] Plans to appeal and keep fighting. He says he will appeal on several grounds, calls the judge a tyrant, and says he will keep fighting. ## Key quotes - [00:05] Donald Trump: "This is a case where if they can do this to me," - [01:07] Donald Trump: "It's a rigged. It was a rig trial." - [02:41] Donald Trump: "This case was dead. It was dropped by every agency, every governmental board." - [03:31] Donald Trump: "They raised with small money donors," - [04:14] Donald Trump: "So we're going to be appealing this scam." - [04:25] Donald Trump: "The judge was a tyrant." ## Questions this video answers - Why does Trump say the trial was unfair? [00:23] - Why does Trump say he did not testify? [01:26] - What does Trump say about the timing of the case? [02:38] - How much does Trump say his campaign raised from small donors? [03:31] - What does Trump say he will do next? [04:14] ## Content suitability - politics [00:02-04:37]: Political remarks by a presidential candidate making partisan claims about a criminal trial, the judge and the justice system. - crime [01:07-04:25]: Discussion of a criminal trial and conviction, including claims about prosecution, a perjury risk and a planned appeal.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent May 31, 2024 7:14 PM UTC Donald Trump attacked the judge and the star witness in his criminal hush money trial and again tried to undermine New York's criminal justice system on Friday, the day after he was convicted on 34 felony charges.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent May 31, 2024 7:14 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ Even by Donald Trump’s standards, the ex-President’s and newly-minuted felon’s Friday morning free-association session in the lobby of his Midtown Manhattan tower was a doozy—and a warning that the march toward Election Day could be just as befuddling. Without evidence, Trump claimed once more that the dozen jurors who voted unanimously to [convict](https://time.com/6983196/donald-trump-convicted-hush-money-trial-new-york/) him on 34 felony charges a day earlier were working at the behest of his political opponent, President Joe Biden. He veered into some really extraneous sideshows, like the one where he says Democrats want to [ban](https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/despite-trump-s-claims-dems-aren-t-trying-ban-cars-n1155566) Americans from having cars, are responsible for the end of Little League [games](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4519783-trump-immigration-rhetoric-biden-matchup/) and luxury [hotels](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/03/20/city-migrant-funding-new-york/), and are to blame for multilingual schools “with languages where very few people have even heard of these languages; it is not like Spanish or French or Russian.” Oh, and for good measure and without prompting, he invoked one of the three other pending criminal trials on his docket, the one [related](https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictments-election-january-6-classified-documents-5cb04868bb1cdf91c19eafdb882af8c0) to his alleged [involvement](https://time.com/6192383/donald-trump-knew-jan-6-hearings/) with the attempted override of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. [_Buy TIME's Donald Trump verdict cover here_](https://timecoverstore.com/featured/donald-trump-convicted-edel-rodriguez-for-time.html) It was, to be frank, a reminder that Trump is simultaneously a figure of seemingly endless self-confidence in his abilities to persuade his audiences that facts are pesky while also serving as his worst enabler. The next five months before Election Day, if Friday is a hint, stand to be just as truth challenged and mind blowing. Americans have been through two national campaigns starring Trump before, but this may set new levels of inanity. After all, which voters are going to decide their presidential preference based on Trump’s [claims](https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-does-bonkers-reenactment-of-karate-fight-in-j6-limo-in-first-post-felony-presser/) that one of his Secret Service agents is a Karate expert who could have poked him in the eye on Jan. 6 if he got too aggressive? A day earlier, Trump [sulked](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/30/very-innocent-man-stares-down-being-convicted-becoming-felon/) in a Lower Manhattan courtroom as a jury found him guilty on charges stemming from dodgy [bookkeeping](https://time.com/5158096/donald-trump-porn-star-stormy-daniels-payment-michael-cohen/) used to conceal hush-money payouts to a porn star who alleged a tryst with the billionaire reality-show star back in 2006\. Jurors agreed with prosecutors that the payouts from the Trump Organization were to help Trump’s 2016 presidential bid avoid a messy scandal in the middle of a campaign, and were in effect illegal campaign contributions. Trump has denied the tryst and payoffs, but on Friday—now found guilty by his peers—seemed to drop that pretense altogether. "Was he a bad boy here? Was he a bad boy there?” Trump asked of himself. Trump has [enjoyed](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html) narrow but consistent leads in national and swing state polls for some time, and it’s not clear his convictions this week—or potentially in other cases about election fraud, democracy interference, or classified documents down the road—make any dent with his die-hard supporters. "Everybody says there's no crime here,” Trump said, working once again to delegitimize the New York jurors who disagreed and said, in fact, there were 34 crimes no matter what his sycophants in the conservative echo chamber put forward. But surely there has to be some breaking point for some voters who are just tired of Trump’s dirge of fabricated realities. Well, at least that’s the hope among Democrats who were completely under-prepared to watch Trump collect more than $34 million in donations—roughly a million dollars per felony conviction—in the hours after learning he was now a felon facing a June sentencing date back in the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan, whom Trump called the devil and a tyrant. Public and private polling alike [shows](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/24/polling-trump-criminal-trial/) Trump supporters have grown less wobbly on their support if he were convicted. Democrats, from the White House to individual candidates, are still telling themselves that abortion and democracy were the more salient topics to mine with voters, not a criminal docket. [_Order your copy of the Trump verdict issue here_](https://magazineshop.us/products/time-magazine-06-24-24-edition/?variant=40502483189818) For his part, it doesn’t seem like Trump recognizes the very real peril ahead of him. If Trump does comprehend his plight—which could involve jail time—he is not one to let on. “Remember, Nov. 5 is the most important day in the history of our country,” Trump told reporters whose questions went unanswered in the gilded lobby. “Thank you,” Trump said curtly, as though he was merely ordering a [taco salad](https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/05/donald-trump-cinco-de-mayo-taco-hispanics-222860) from the commissary down the hall. For a figure replete with bombast and armed with endless self-worth, Trump seems to think he can bluster his way out of this pickle, and he mightn’t be entirely irrational. Up until this week, Trump had tangoed through troubles with little more than a scratch. And, given this nation’s seemingly limitless capacity to indulge Trump’s excesses, grievances, and bravado, Trump may well be proven correct. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ## Transcript [00:02] Thank you very much, everybody. [00:05] This is a case where if they can do this to me, [00:11] they can do this to anyone. [00:13] So I'm the leading person for president and I'm under [00:15] a gag order by a man that can't put two sentences together. [00:20] As far as the trial itself. [00:23] It was very unfair. We weren't [00:27] allowed to use our election expert under any circumstances. [00:32] You saw what happened to some of the witnesses that were on our side. [00:36] They were literally crucified by this man who looks like an angel, [00:42] but he's really a devil. [00:44] He looks so nice and soft. [00:46] People say, Oh, he seems like such a nice man no [00:48] unless you saw him in action. And you saw that. [00:52] With a certain witness that went through hell. [00:55] And when we wanted to do things, [00:58] he wouldn't let he wouldn't let us do those things. [01:02] But when the government wanted something, they got everything. [01:05] They got everything they wanted. [01:07] It's a rigged. It was a rig trial. [01:10] We wanted a venue change where we could have a fair trial. [01:14] We didn't get it. We wanted a judge change. [01:17] We wanted a judge that wasn't conflicted. [01:19] And obviously, he didn't do that. [01:23] The nobody's ever seen anything like it. [01:26] Now, I would have testified. [01:27] I wanted to testify. [01:28] The theory is you never testify, [01:30] cause as soon as you testify, anybody. [01:32] If it were George Washington, don't testify, [01:35] 'cause they'll get you on something that you said slightly wrong, [01:37] and then they sue you for perjury. [01:39] But I didn't care about that. I wanted to. [01:41] But the judge allowed them to go into [01:43] everything that I was ever involved in not this case. [01:46] Everything that I was ever involved in, which is a first. [01:50] In other words, you could go into every single thing that I ever did. [01:55] Was he a bad boy here? Was he a bad boy there? [01:58] My said, What do you need to go through? [02:01] All you wanted to do is testify simply on this case. [02:04] Because I would've loved to have testified. [02:06] To this day, I would've liked to have testified. [02:08] But you would have you would have said something out of whack, [02:12] like it was a beautiful sunny day, [02:14] and it was actually raining out. [02:15] And I very much appreciate the big crowd of people outside. [02:19] That's incredible what's happening. [02:21] The level of support has been incredible. [02:23] By the way, and nothing ever happened. [02:26] There was no anything. [02:28] Nothing ever happened and they know it. [02:30] But they were as salacious as they could be, [02:33] and it had nothing to do with the case, [02:35] but it had to do with politics. [02:38] And do you notice the timing? [02:40] The timing was perfect. [02:41] This case was dead. It was dropped by every agency, every governmental board. [02:47] It was dropped by the highly respected Southern District. [02:51] They said, no, there's no case here. [02:53] Then when I announced I was running for president, [02:56] Long time later, they decided to revive this case. [03:00] And they got a judge Judge Marchan, because this was very old. [03:07] They could have brought this seven years ago [03:09] instead of bringing it right in the middle of the election. [03:11] So they missed the statute of limitations, they did everything. [03:15] Now, let me give you the good news. [03:16] The good news is, at night, [03:21] we just got a report this morning. [03:23] In the history of politics, I believe. [03:26] Maybe I'm wrong. Somebody will find that I'm wrong, [03:29] maybe, but I don't think so. [03:31] They raised with small money donors, [03:34] meaning like $21, $42, [03:38] $53, $38, a record $39 million in about a ten hour period. [03:48] No, think of that. I like those people. [04:02] Because so far, I guess it's backfire. Now, I don't know. [04:06] I'd rather not have it happen. [04:08] I don't want to have it backfired. [04:09] I don't want to win this thing legitimately, [04:11] not because they were stupid and did things that they shouldn't be doing. [04:14] So we're going to be appealing this scam. [04:18] We're going to be appealing it on many different things. [04:20] He wouldn't allow us to have witnesses. [04:22] He wouldn't allow us to talk. [04:23] He wouldn't allow us to do anything. [04:25] The judge was a tyrant. [04:27] We're gonna fight. It's actually, I don't know. [04:30] It's something where I'm wired in [04:33] such a way that a lot of people would have gone away a long time ago ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6984366/donald-trump-guilty-2024-election/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6984366/donald-trump-guilty-2024-election/"},"headline":"Donald Trump Thinks He Can Talk His Way Out of This. He Might Be Right","datePublished":"2024-05-31T19:14:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-19T07:43:01.629Z","description":"\"Everybody says there's no crime here,” Trump insists.","url":"https://time.com/6984366/donald-trump-guilty-2024-election/","keywords":["The D.C. 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