Molly Ball Invokes Stormy Spanking Trump With Magazine to Make Strong Case For Print Journalism

Jamie FreveleMay 9th, 2024, 1:56 pm

Thursday marked the second and final day of adult film star Stormy Daniels’ testimony in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial, and analysis by the networks included a strong defense of… print journalism!

Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, appeared on CNN for pre-game discussion of Daniels’ Day 2. After anchor Kasie Hunt summed up Daniels’ previous comments about spanking Trump with a magazine, legal analyst Elliot Williams explained why this testimony had to be introduced, at which point Ball interrupted to point out that this was truly an important moment for analog media:

Williams: Again, we can debate till the end of the time whether spanking on the butt with the TIME magazine is a necessary fact for the public to know, but they had to put that witness on, full stop.

Ball: Can I just say as a long-time magazine reporter that I think this, more than anything —

Williams: I shouldn’t have said TIME magazine, oh god!

Ball: I don’t know if we know that it was TIME magazine, but, you know, it really speaks to —

Hunt: I think it was Forbes magazine, actually. [Ed. note: Forbes has stated that it probably wasn’t Forbes.]

Ball: — the necessity of print. You know, we have to have these objects around us. You can’t do that with a phone. You can’t do that with a computer. You need magazines, you need print journalism. And it’s a ringing endorsement.