Let's clear up this confusing trade talk once and for all

The facts are as follows:

Last Thursday a New York trial jury of five women and seven men unanimously convicted former President Donald Trump of falsifying business records regarding a hush money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. The payment, in several installments just before the 2016 presidential election, was made in order to prevent her claim about having sex with Trump several years earlier from going public, according to the jury finding. Trump denies a sexual encounter occurred.

The dozen jurors, from many occupations and personal backgrounds, agreed that Trump had approved the payment to fraudulently protect his chances of winning the 2016 election. That finding raised the alleged wrongdoing from a misdemeanor-issuing false invoices and checks-to a felony conspiracy on 34 counts.

The nonviolent crime for which Trump was found guilty is a Class E felony, New York's lowest felony level. Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, set sentencing for July 11. Merchan has a number of sentencing options from which to choose: he could send Trump to prison for from 16 months to four years, order him to house arrest, order him to do community service, grant him probation, or fine him.

Trump and his lead attorney Todd Blanche have announced their intention to appeal the conviction on several grounds. Filing their appeal must wait until after the July 11 sentencing date. The appeal will go initially to the state court's Appellate Division, First Department, in Manhattan. If Trump lost there, he could extend his appeal to the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court, and possibly on to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In any event, it is unlikely that an appeals court would hand down a decision before the November 5 election. So if Trump is indeed the Republican presidential nominee-an almost certain conclusion-he would remain a convicted felon on Election Day. That status would not prevent him from appearing on the ballot or from serving as President if elected.

Those are the facts of the situation. What they mean in terms of politics is another matter.

Politicians and pundits are all over the map on whether the conviction helps or hurts Trump. Will he gain support in voters' minds because they think the decision to prosecute him and the guilty verdict were unfair, and based predominantly on politics? Will he lose support because voters don't want a convicted felon leading the nation? Or does it matter to voters at all?

Republicans have a tougher choice in this regard than Democrats, of course. Most Democrats are going to vote against Trump anyway. Different polls report a variety of results when raising that question with Independents. But Republicans have a lot invested in Donald Trump by now, both financially and psychologically.

If polls are to be believed, Trump has convinced most Republicans that the 2020 election was fraudulent, and that he actually won most of the electoral votes: in other words, that Joe Biden sits in the Oval Office illegally. Trump's conviction in the New York case, piled on top of that kind of thinking, makes some Republican voters dig in their heels even further.

And then there are the three other cases pending against Trump: they level charges of trying to overthrow the 2020 election (both nationally and in Georgia specifically) and of illegally maintaining personal possession of classified federal government documents.

The former President is fond of saying that the American people have never before witnessed such levels of unfairness, or of corruption, or of voter fraud, or of something else: take your choice. One thing we have certainly never witnessed before is a former President convicted of a felony (34 of them, to be exact), let alone seeing him run for President once again.

A good friend recently said, "The question is no longer about his character. The question now is whether character matters to you."