Donald Trump said he would accept home confinement or jail time after his historic conviction by a New York jury last week but that it would be tough for the public to accept.
“I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” the Republican presidential candidate told Fox News in an interview that aired on Sunday. “I think it’d be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”
Trump did not elaborate on what he thought might happen if that point is reached.
He is scheduled to be sentenced July 11, four days before Republicans gather to formally choose their presidential nominee to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s election.
Asked what Trump supporters should do if he were jailed, Republic National Committee (RNC) co-chair Lara Trump told CNN: “Well, they’re gonna do what they’ve done from the beginning, which is remain calm and protest at the ballot box on November 5th. There’s nothing to do other than make your voices heard loud and clear and speak out against this.”
Trump has used his conviction to step up his fundraising efforts but has not otherwise sought to mobilise his supporters, in contrast to his comments protesting his 2020 loss to Biden that were followed by an attack by his supporters on January 6, 2021 on the US Capitol.
The RNC and the Trump campaign raised $70mn in the 48 hours after the verdict, Lara Trump said, a figure that Reuters was not able to independently verify.
Asked how much would be used to pay legal fees versus running the campaign, she declined to say.
At least one Democratic lawmaker expressed concern on Sunday about the potential for Trump’s supporters to respond violently to his conviction.
“His base listens to him. They don’t listen to Lara Trump. And this is another dangerous appeal to violence,” Democratic US Representative Adam Schiff told CNN.
Schiff said that Trump’s strategy was clear: “This is essentially his threat that, if he gets jail time, that he’s going to encourage his supporters to rise up.
“And we saw the very deadly results of that on January 6,” he added.
However, US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump ally, said any response must be lawful.
“We are the rule of law party – chaos is not a conservative value. We have to fight back and we will with everything in our arsenal. But we do that within the confines of the rule of law,” he told Fox News Sunday.
Trump has vowed to appeal his conviction by the New York jury, which found him guilty of 34 felony counts over falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence an adult entertainment actress ahead of the 2016 election.
It was the first criminal conviction of a former president in US history.
Although each charge carries a possible four-year jail term, experts say it is extremely unlikely that the judge will hand down a custodial sentence.
Breaking her silence following Trump’s conviction, the actress Stormy Daniels said the former president should be put in prison.
“I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the less fortunate, or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter,” Daniels said in an interview with the British tabloid The Mirror published late on Saturday.
The matter is unlikely to be resolved before the November presidential election, when he will seek to take back the White House from Biden.
Opinion polls show a close race between the two men and suggest that his conviction could hurt him with some Republican voters and independents.
Trump attorney Will Scharf told ABC News’ This Week that he does not expect Trump to “end up being subject to any sentence whatsoever” and planned to ultimately take the case to the Supreme Court.
Trump still faces three other criminal cases, although they are not likely to come to trial before the election.
He denies wrongdoing in all the cases and has called the charges a Democratic conspiracy to prevent him from competing.
Biden, meanwhile, has sought to defend the nation’s justice system, saying that it is “reckless” and “dangerous” to call the verdict “rigged”.
The US Justice Department denies any political interference.