We knew it would be chaotic. Since last week’s conviction of former president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump, we’re beginning to see the reactions from all sides, while the spin machines are busily telling us what to think.

On the Right, Trump is his own spin machine. He complains bitterly — and constantly — that he is a political victim, treated savagely by a weaponized justice system. He’s correct on that score, and evidently many agree, as indicated by the flood of campaign contributions — in excess of $200 million — since his conviction. Americans know a hatchet job when they see one, and I suspect that even the gleeful perpetrators, whether they admit it or not, already know that it’s not working out exactly as expected.

Worth noting as well is that the reaction from the Right, including Trump’s ardent and now very angry supporters, has been peaceful. That’s a far cry from what we’ve come to expect from leftists when their ox is gored. Recall, for example, the violent protesting, doxing, and attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Maybe right-wing extremism is not the nation’s top domestic threat as we’re so often told.

So far, Trump is being Trump — energized, angry, relishing his status as a victim, holding rallies, and fundraising nonstop. He’s won this early round, but he should tone down the martyr routine before it degenerates into crybaby territory.

From the other side, the reaction is pure political calculation.

The Democrats’ lawfare scheme is, at its core, transactional. From Day One, their 2024 election strategy has been totally focused on the “danger” posed to the nation by Donald Trump. Now, they have purchased, at great cost, an invaluable election tool — the license to call their 2024 opponent a “convicted felon.”

They’re thrilled, positively giddy, about their shiny new toy. We hear the words constantly from smirking politicians and TV talkingheads, and it’s all over the internet. It is, in fact, a very powerful tool. Who could possibly want a convicted felon for president? We’ve never had one before, and polls show that many voters are very uneasy at that prospect.

But at the same time, Democrats seem a bit surprised — maybe even panicky — at the substantial public blowback about the way they pulled it off. That calls for damage control, which is taking shape in the form of a slightly revised election narrative along these lines:

Hey, America, we’ve been telling you all along that our opponent, Donald Trump, is a very bad guy. Many believe he is a criminal who must be held accountable for his actions. Now, the law has caught up with him, and our justice system is treating him just as it would treat anyone. No one is above the law!

They are selling that message to the voting public in two ways: by normalizing the indictment and trial we all just watched and by simultaneously emphasizing the enormity of his conviction.

Just one day after the verdict, President Joe Biden reminded us about our famously fair and evenhanded judicial system, asserted that Trump “had every opportunity to defend himself” (really?), and railed at Trump’s furious objection “just because he didn’t like the outcome.” That’s classic Biden, blissfully ignoring the irony that the show trial his team just staged has tarnished forever that marvelous American justice system.

Meanwhile, District Attorney Alvin Bragg asserts that there was nothing special about the trial, describing that kind of prosecution as their “bread and butter” — just another day at the office. Nonsense. As we all know, Bragg’s novel transformation of an expired (five years past statute of limitations) minor misdemeanor allegation into a felony indictment is unprecedented. The case was contrived to trip up one man, Donald Trump. There has never been another like it.

At the same time, the narrative-pushers are selling hard the enormity of Trump’s crime. The apparent proof is his conviction on all 34 counts. THIRTY-FOUR! The Leftmedia’s fascination with that number — it’s in every headline — is telling. It seems like a tangible metric of severity, even though it is not.

The crime underlying this first-ever criminal prosecution of a former president was essentially a single case of alleged falsification of campaign finance records regarding a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. (By the way, hush-money payments — nondisclosure agreements — are not illegal.) Along with elevating that relatively unimportant (and unproven) offense, Bragg cleverly counted each incremental step — individual invoices, signed checks, and record entries — as a separate felony, leading to a total of 34.

The resulting, intentional impression: a Trump crime spree worthy of John Dillinger. How many prospective Trump voters’ minds might be changed by the shocking news that the former president was found guilty of not one, but THIRTY-FOUR separate felonies? I suspect that most Americans don’t even know what crime Trump is guilty of — but now they think that there were a lot of them.

In short, by now, surely no one still believes the spin that the Democrats’ lawfare campaign — the election-year bombardment of legal attacks targeting their political opponent — was not politically motivated. There are some early indications that the electorate, with already baked-in views of both candidates, will not be heavily swayed by last week’s conviction, but it’s too soon to tell. And we know that the inescapable long-term consequences are badly shaken confidence in our legal system and greater partisan rancor than ever.

At this point, the best possible outcome of this whole mess would be for both political parties to recognize that this year’s lawfare assault was the dumbest political stunt in election history — one that poisoned the well for both sides. Then maybe we’ll never go down that path again.