Mary Trump weighs in on uncle's hush money conviction: 'Finally'

Former President Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, weighed in on Friday on her uncle’s recent conviction in his New York hush money case.

"I think we need to factor in the idea that Donald, never in a million years, thought that this could happen to him," Mary Trump said in an appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room" with anchor Wolf Blitzer when asked about what her uncle is likely feeling post-guilty verdict. "And understandably so, this is somebody who has lived his life with total impunity. And... for it finally to come, for accountability finally to come, after almost eight decades, must have taken the wind out of him."

Trump’s uncle became the first former president to have the status of being a convicted felon on Thursday, following a jury finding him guilty on all counts of falsifying business records to hide alleged affairs amid his 2016 campaign.

The former president criticized the trial in the wake of the verdict being read.

“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people, and they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here,” he said.

When asked Thursday by CNN anchor Abby Phillip what she thought the former president was “thinking about” on the night following the conviction, Trump responded that her uncle was “probably doing his best not to think about anything, quite honestly, but, I think even he cannot deny, as much as he'd like to, that today, he was convicted on 34 felony counts and that he is indeed a convicted felon and he's going to have to grapple with the fallout of that.”

“However, having said that, I think the — the recognition of that won't last very long,” Trump continued. “I… we seem to be in a very similar situation to the one we were in after the 2020 election. Privately, he was able to concede that he had lost, but very quickly after that, the humiliation sort of overwhelmed him, and we ended up with ‘the Big Lie,’ which led to ‘Stop the Steal,’ which led to the insurrection.”

“So, unfortunately, I do think we need to be braced for a pivot to his attempts, at least, to create another alternate reality in which he can protect himself from what is — unquestionably — a devastating loss in court today.”

Mary Trump has long criticized her uncle, releasing her book "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" in 2020.