Donald Trump, the first convicted felon to be elected president, was sentenced today in his New York hush-money case, pleasing virtually no one.

Justice Juan Merchan sentenced the president-elect to an unconditional discharge, meaning Trump will face no penalties other than the stigma of a conviction. Trump was furious that he was sentenced at all, and had mounted a campaign in the courts of law and public opinion to stop it. His critics won’t be happy with the sentence itself, which is less than a slap on the wrist.

This mutual unhappiness was perhaps the only point of agreement at the hearing in Manhattan. “This defendant has caused enduring damage to public perception of the criminal-justice system and has placed officers of the court in harm’s way,” the prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said. Trump, meanwhile, said the case had “been a tremendous setback” for the New York courts. “This has been a very terrible experience,” he said.

[Read: Trump’s New York sentencing must proceed]

The fact that someone could commit the crimes that Trump has and still win a presidential election remains galling, but the difficulty of getting to this moment, and the ways the other criminal cases against him stalled out, shows how significant the sentencing is, even considering its leniency. Trump’s criminal trials have demonstrated that there is not equal justice for all, but there is some justice. Bringing this case to sentencing was part of that.

The hearing itself held little drama. Trump didn’t come back to his hometown for it, opting to appear via video from Mar-a-Lago. Merchan had indicated in a filing last week that he would opt for an unconditional discharge, and prosecutors didn’t oppose that decision. Neither party may have had much choice. The idea that Trump was ever going to spend time in prison was always a dream. Trump continues to insist that he did nothing wrong, and on Truth Social claimed, incorrectly, that the discharge “proves that … THERE IS NO CASE.”

Trump fought hard to avoid even so light a sentence. After he was convicted in May 2024 on 34 felony counts relating to paying the porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep a sexual encounter secret, sentencing was scheduled for July 2024, but that was delayed until after the election. After winning, Trump tried unsuccessfully to get Merchan to throw out the conviction. His lawyers then asked an appeals court to block the sentencing, but were rejected. They also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to do so, but the justices narrowly rejected that. (Four conservatives—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—would have granted the request.) He can still appeal his conviction, and has vowed to do so.

[Read: The cases against Trump: A guide]

The resources Trump marshaled to fight against the sentencing hint at why this was the only case to go to trial as well as the only one to end in a conviction. The Justice Department brought federal charges against Trump related to subverting the 2020 election and hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump managed to get the former case before the Supreme Court, which granted astonishing immunity to a president; though the DOJ moved forward even under the new rules, Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the charges once Trump won the election, a nod both to DOJ rules that bar prosecuting a sitting president and to Trump’s vow to kill the case. The documents case was effectively sabotaged by a Trump-appointed federal judge. Another case, in state court in Georgia, is in limbo after the district attorney was removed by judges, but would have been unlikely to proceed while Trump is in office anyway.

The New York sentencing doesn’t solve the fact that Trump managed to get off scot-free for two serious offenses: an attempt to steal an election, carried out mostly in plain sight, and refusing to turn over documents that no one disputes he refused to turn over. (Trump merely contends he had a right to keep them.) The sentence is, however, a rebuke to Trump’s claim that his political wins ought to erase any accountability for his actions. He invoked his electoral victories again during today’s hearings while criticizing his prosecution. This is, or should be, irrelevant.

[Bob Bauer: Trump is poised to turn the DOJ into his personal law firm]

“No doubt all public-official defendants would like to be able to say that winning their next election means everyone should just forget about their alleged crimes,” Randall D. Eliason wrote in The Atlantic in November. “That’s not how our system works. An election is not a jury verdict, and winning an election doesn’t make you any less guilty.”

Merchan was at pains today to make clear that Trump is granted certain immunities and privileges through the office of the president and that they do not attach to his person. This distinction is likely lost on Trump, and may be difficult for many other Americans to have faith in. In one sign of how tightly intertwined these things have become, the defense lawyers representing Trump today are poised to take top positions in the Justice Department once Trump is inaugurated.

Trump has indicated he will work hard to continue to erase the distinction once in office. The important thing about today’s proceeding, however, was not whether it ended with a bang or a whimper but that it concluded at all.

Donald Trump avoids jail time or a fine but the US president-elect's criminal conviction will be on his record.

Two conservative justices join three liberal members in a 5-4 decision to clear the way for the sentencing.

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President Joe Biden still imagines that he could have won. Asked by USA Today’s Susan Page whether he could have beaten Donald Trump if he had stayed in the race, Biden responded: “It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes.”

Reality thinks not.

Of course, we’ll never know for sure, but the evidence (including polling) suggests that he would have been crushed by an even larger margin than Kamala Harris was. Biden’s answer is a reminder that his legacy will be tarnished by his fundamental misreading of the moment and his own role in it.

To be sure, Biden can point to some impressive successes. He leaves behind a healthy and growing economy, a record of legislative accomplishment, and more than 230 judicial appointments, including a Supreme Court justice. And then there were the failures: the chaotic exit from Afghanistan; a massive surge of migrants at the border in 2023. Although Biden was not solely to blame for inflation—factors included the Federal Reserve’s low-interest-rate policy and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—his spending policies contributed to the problem. And even though he rallied Europe to the defense of Ukraine, critics suggest that he also misread that moment—Phillips Payson O’Brien argued in The Atlantic in November that the Biden administration “treated the conflict like a crisis to be managed, not a war to be won.” Ukraine’s uncertain fate is now left to Biden’s successor.

A charismatic and energetic president might have been able to overcome these failures and win a run for reelection. Some presidents seize the public’s imagination; Biden barely even got its attention. He presumed that he could return to a Before Times style of politics, where the president was a backroom bipartisan dealmaker. Whereas Trump dominated the news, Biden seemed to fade into the background almost from the beginning, seldom using his bully pulpit to rally public support or explain his vision for the country. Trump was always in our faces, but it often felt like Biden was … elsewhere.

Biden also misread the trajectory of Trumpism. Like so many others, he thought that the problem of Trump had taken care of itself and that his election meant a return to normalcy. So he chose as his attorney general Merrick Garland, who seems to have seen his role as restoring the Department of Justice rather than pursuing accountability for the man who’d tried to overturn the election. Eventually, Garland turned the cases over to Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought indictments. But it was too late. With time running out and a Supreme Court ruling in favor of broad presidential immunity, Trump emerged unscathed. And then came the sad final chapter of Biden’s presidency, which may well overshadow everything else.

When he ran for president in 2020, Biden described himself as a “transition candidate” and a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders. But instead of stepping aside for those younger leaders, Biden chose to seek another term, despite the growing evidence of his decline. With the future of democracy at stake, Biden’s inner circle appeared to shield the octogenarian president. His team didn’t just insist that voters ignore what was in front of their eyes; it also maintained that the aging president could serve out another four-year term. Some Democrats clung to denial—and shouted down internal critics—until Biden’s disastrous debate performance put an end to the charade.

Even then, Biden stubbornly tried to hang on, before intense pressure from his own party forced him to drop out of the race in July. Now he is shuffling to the end of his presidency, already shunted aside by his successor and still in denial.

As the passing of Jimmy Carter reminds us, presidential legacies are complicated matters, and it is difficult to predict the verdict of history. But as Biden leaves office, he is less a transformational figure than a historical parenthesis. He failed to grasp both the political moment and the essential mission of his presidency.

Other presidents have misunderstood their mandate. But in Biden’s case, the consequences were existential: By his own logic, the Prime Directive of his presidency was to preserve democracy by preventing Donald Trump’s return to power. His failure to do so will likely be the lasting legacy of his four years in office.

Related:

Biden’s unpardonable hypocrisy How Biden made a mess of Ukraine

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The army of God comes out of the shadows. “The Palisades Fire is destroying places that I’ve loved.” Why “late regime” presidencies fail

Today’s News

Former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral took place in Washington, D.C. Carter’s casket was flown to Georgia after; he will be buried in his hometown of Plains. At least five people are dead in the wildfires that have spread across parts of the Los Angeles area. More than 2,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed. New York’s highest court denied Donald Trump’s request to halt the sentencing hearing in his criminal hush-money case.

Dispatches

Time-Travel Thursdays: Early-career poetry often poses a tantalizing question: How did this poet start off so terrible—and end up so good? But a writer’s final works are compelling for a different reason, Walt Hunter writes.

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Evening Read

Illustration by Jan Buchczik

You’re Going to Die. That’s a Good Thing.

By Arthur C. Brooks

Death is inevitable, of course; the most ordinary aspect of life is that it ends. And yet, the prospect of that ending feels so foreign and frightening to us. The American anthropologist Ernest Becker explored this strangeness in his 1973 book, The Denial of Death, which led to the development by other scholars of “terror management theory.” This theory argues that we fill our lives with pastimes and distractions precisely to avoid dealing with death …

If we could resolve this dissonance and accept reality, wouldn’t life be better? The answer is most definitely yes.

Read the full article.

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Watch. Abbott Elementary and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia don’t have much common ground. That’s why their first crossover episode (available on Hulu) felt so fresh, Hannah Giorgis writes.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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