ABC News host George Stephanopoulos issued another warning on Sunday about the 2024 presidential election and asked his viewers if they really wanted to be led by a convicted felon, former President Donald Trump.
"In 1774, John Adams said, ‘representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty.' Two hundred-fifty years later, the heart and lungs of liberty are facing what may be the ultimate stress test," Stephanopoulos said during his show, "This Week."
A jury found Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan criminal case on Thursday.
While Stephanopoulos noted that other criminal cases against Trump had yet to be resolved, he told viewers, "But for now, the New York jurors have already presented their fellow citizens with a choice: do we want to be represented, to be led for the first time in history by a convicted felon? That answer will come in November."
After President Biden called on reporters to take the 2024 election very seriously and move past the "gotcha" moments during his speech at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in late April, Stephanopoulos also took the time to argue that the presidential contest was anything but normal.
"It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens," Stephanopoulos said.
He warned that no other presidential candidate in history had faced a criminal trial, and added, "No American president has faced hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse."
At the glitzy Washington D.C. gala the night before, Biden told reporters that the stakes in the presidential race couldn't be higher.
"Move past the horse race numbers and the 'gotcha' moments and the distractions and the sideshows that have come to dominate and sensationalize our politics, and focus on what’s actually at stake," Biden said. "I think in your hearts, you know what's at stake. The stakes couldn’t be higher."
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Stephanopoulos also sparred with Trump lawyer Will Scharf on Sunday after the attorney argued the Manhattan case was politically motivated.
"There’s no evidence here of that," the ABC host said, responding to Scharf's argument that President Biden was involved in the prosecution of Trump. "Sir, there’s no – there’s not – I'm not going to let you continue to say that. There’s just zero evidence of that."
"We’re going to vigorously challenge this case on appeal. I don’t think President Trump is going to end up being subject to any sentence whatsoever. And we look forward to getting this case into the – into the next court and taking this again all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to vindicate President Trump’s rights," Scharf said.
