Trump’s Trial Has the Media Falling Back Into All of Its Worst Habits
Timothy A. Clary/Pool via AP
Among Donald Trump’s most frustrating superpowers is his ability to drag those around him into the muck.
The GOP itself and many of the conservative movement’s institutions — from think tanks, to media outlets, to its congressional caucuses — are of course to be counted among his all-too-willing victims. But so too is the mainstream, left-of-center press, which has both ideological contempt and professional affinity for the 45th president; he doesn’t advance their policy agenda, but he sure is good for ratings. That’s why disgraced former CNN president Jeff Zucker offered Trump political advice in 2016 and later defended the network’s monomaniacal obsession with Trump by insisting that’s what news consumers wanted. Disgraced former CBS chairman Leslie Moonves was even more blunt, calling Trump’s rise “damn good for CBS.”
For awhile after leaving office, Trump retreated to Mar-a-Lago and Truth Social, starving the media of its favorite content and giving the rest of us a reprieve from it. Now, though, Trump’s reemergence on the political scene as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee — and especially his concurrent legal battles — have the Fourth Estate falling back into all of its worst habits.
Chief among them, of course, is cable news’ tendency to flood the zone with 24/7, wall-to-wall coverage of him. To celebrate the former president’s criminal trial in New York City, CNN invented a new program called “Trump Hush Money Trial” which it has aired from 9am to 4pm on most weekdays for the duration of his more than six-week long trial. MSNBC — and for that matter Fox News — didn’t go that far, but they have also devoted a disproportionate amount of coverage to the proceeding, although from decidedly different perspectives. It’s as though the media reflected on its saturating coverage of the Trump-Russia investigation and decided that it had underplayed it.
This isn’t just a boon to Trump, who ultimately benefits from being the center of attention, but a loss for Americans who would benefit from coverage of the issues most important to them, such as immigration, inflation, abortion, and the aggression of the United States’ enemies abroad.
Moreover, the desperate bid for eyeballs and shared hatred of Trump between journalists and their core audiences suckers the latter group into lionizing individuals they would otherwise recognize as being reprehensible. Consider, for example, the case of Michael Cohen, the principal witness for the prosecution in Trump’s hush money case who has found new meaning in his role as a #Resistance hero.
In one embarrassing moment emblematic of this phenomenon, CNN’s Jake Tapper hosted Omarosa Manigault Newman, a Trump coattail rider turned critic, for an interview in which she assured the network’s star anchor that Cohen was “locked in” for the trial. In another, MSNBC’s Andrew Weissmann swooned over Cohen’s “remarkable” composure on the witness stand.
The praise for Cohen has been reminiscent of the the praise heaped on Michael Avenatti, who was even hyped up as a potential presidential candidate during Trump’s president, but at least Avenatti was not (at that point) a convicted felon.
This isn’t edifying news coverage or thoughtful analysis, it’s thinly-veiled fan fiction. And those responsible for it are burning their credibility in order to satisfy the narrow slice of the population gratified by it.
The return of the media’s “the walls are closing in” refrain also slots neatly into this fanciful category. If you took a shot of your favorite liquor every time a reporter breathlessly tweeted about Trump closing his eyes in the courtroom, or a network anchor speculated that Trump was “frustrated,” or “agitated,” or “lashing out,” or feeling “boxed in,” you’d be dead.
“Everything just seems like he [Trump] doesn’t want to be there, he doesn’t want this to happen,” declared Chris Hayes at the outset of the trial last month. “He clearly does not want to be there,” affirmed New York Magazine‘s Olivia Nuzzi, apparently in awe of a criminal defendant’s displeasure with being in such a position.
“I was really not prepared for the sight of him in that courtroom today. It’s this very drab space with this terrible lighting and it’s all kind of neutrals and then he kind of comes in technicolor orange with the golden hair and this kind of high-blue suit and he looks, I don’t know, it’s like a poppy flower or something in the desert,” continued Nuzzi. “It’s so strange to see him in that context with no power,” she said, marveling at the fact that the judge asked him to sit down at one point.
“He has no power in there,” she repeated, almost gleefully.
Whatever this trial may have revealed about Donald Trump, it’s revealed so much more about those entrusted with covering him.
Most saliently, that they have no power over their own, most base impulses.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
