The Donald Trump camp expects to have the Republican nomination for the U.S. presidential election wrapped up by March 19 — 14 weeks from now — when they believe they will have accrued 1,478 delegates, a comfortable margin over the 1,235 needed to win.
At that very moment, Trump will be sitting — compelled by law to sit there every day, Monday through Friday — in the E Barrett Prettyman Federal District Court on Constitution Avenue in downtown Washington DC, 10 minutes from his former White House residence. He will be tried for conspiracy, witness tampering and obstruction of official proceedings. The trial, due to start on March 4, is expected to take four weeks or so and virtually everyone, including his own team, expects him to lose it. But, if the polls, which now put him nationally 50 points or more ahead of his nearest Republican opponents, and 25 to 30 points ahead in the two most difficult early states, Iowa and New Hampshire, are not fundamentally broken, he will, during the trial, become his party’s nominee for president days before he becomes a convicted felon.
