Donald Trump says he would accept home confinement or jail time after his historic conviction by a New York jury last week but that it would be “tough” for the public to accept.

“I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” the Republican US presidential candidate told Fox News in an interview on Sunday (local time).

“I think it’d be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

Trump will be sentenced on July 11, four days before Republicans gather to formally choose their presidential nominee to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s election.

Asked what Trump supporters should do if he were jailed, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump told CNN: “They’re going to do what they’ve done from the beginning, which is remain calm and protest at the ballot box on November 5. There’s nothing to do other than make your voices heard loud and clear and speak out against this.”

Trump has used his conviction to step up his fundraising efforts but had not otherwise sought to mobilise his supporters.

It’s a contrast to his comments protesting about his 2020 election loss to Biden at a rally on January 6, 2021, which was followed by an attack by Trump supporters on the US Capitol.

However, the Democratic campaign headquarters shared an angry reaction to Sunday’s remarks.

“Convicted felon Trump suggests there will be violence if he is put under house arrest,” the Biden-Harris HQ tweeted.

The RNC and the Trump campaign raised $US70 million ($105 million) in the 48 hours after the verdict, Lara Trump said, a figure that Reuters was not able to independently verify.

Trump has vowed to appeal against his conviction by the New York jury, which found him guilty of 34 felony counts over falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star before the 2016 election.

But the matter is unlikely to be resolved before the November presidential election.

Trump still faces three other criminal cases, although they are not likely to come to trial before the election.

He denies all wrongdoing and has called the charges a Democratic conspiracy to prevent him from competing.

Biden, meanwhile, has sought to defend the US justice system, saying it is “reckless” and “dangerous” to call the verdict “rigged”.

The US Justice Department denies any political interference.

Trump lawyer Will Scharf told US broadcaster ABC News that he did not expect Trump to “end up being subject to any sentence whatsoever” and planned to take the case to the Supreme Court.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump ally, told Fox News on Sunday he knew the court’s justices and “they are deeply concerned, as we are, about maintaining our system of justice”.

Storming onto TikTok

Elsewhere, Trump has executed a TikTok backflip, attracting more than two million followers in just a couple of hours after joining the platform at the weekend.

He had tried to ban the social media platform on national security grounds while he was president.

The decision to join the platform on Saturday could help the former president reach younger voters in his third bid for the White House.

Biden’s campaign is already on TikTok, with 336,000 followers.

Biden has signed a bill that would ban the app, which is used by 170 million people in the US, if its Chinese owner ByteDance fails to divest it.

Trump posted a launch video on his account.

The video, which has more than 34 million views, showed Trump greeting fans at an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight in Newark, New Jersey.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said it would leave “no front undefended” in its efforts to reach younger voters.

Trump’s attempt to ban TikTok in 2020 when he was president was blocked by the courts.

He said in March that the platform was a national security threat but also that a ban on it would hurt some young people and only strengthen Meta Platforms’ Facebook, which he has strongly criticised.

Trump already has an active social media presence with more than 87 million followers on X and about seven million followers on his own platform, Truth Social, where he posts almost daily.

-with AAP