Trump Upends How Americans View the Presidency

Peter Baker: “A big economic package, mass deportations, maybe even some invasions of other countries. Oh, and one more item. ‘I’ll do my little thing tomorrow,’ a busy President-elect Donald Trump mentioned the other night.”

“That little thing was the first criminal sentencing of an American president. That little thing was confirmation that Mr. Trump, just 10 days later, would become the first president to move into the White House with a rap sheet. That little thing is the latest shift in standards that once governed high office.”

“Mr. Trump does not really consider it a little thing, of course, given how strenuously he sought to avoid Friday’s sentencing for 34 felony counts in his hush money case. But to a remarkable degree, he has succeeded in making it a little thing in the body politic. What was once a pretty-much-guaranteed disqualifier for the presidency is now just one more political event seen through a partisan lens.”