When NBC went on the air on Thursday for their special coverage of former President Donald Trump’s conviction in New York, legal analyst Laura Jarrett touched on the reaction the verdict received from his supporters. The only problem for NBC was that the footage they showed alongside Jarrett of a hysterical Trump supporter who could be heard yelling and screaming throughout her report was of a Jimmy Kimmel-employed liberal actor.
The man’s name is Tony Barbieri, who does a bit for ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! where he calls himself Jake Byrd and travels across the country acting like a caricatured conservative, and NBC is hardly the first media outlet to treat him as an actual conservative. In 2022, CNN actually interviewed him pretending to be a Herschel Walker supporter.
Jarrett reported that “You can hear the crowd here. There’s a lot of Trump supporters out here that you can hear, are very worked up as I was reading the verdict, I could hear the crowd. Emotion growing behind me. I'm only a couple yards away from the area that you can see on your screens right there, sort of, the First Amendment area, if you will. Just a stone's throw away from the press area. It’s been growing as the day went on.”
Just as CNN should’ve been tipped off by Barbieri’s Hillary Clinton-inspired “I’m with Herschel” shirt, NBC should’ve been tipped off by his “Free Father Teresa” sign, which is a reference to a comment Trump made earlier in the trial that amused Kimmel.
Kimmel confirmed it was a bit later on his show where the production team put together a montage of Barbieri’s antics that naturally showed the NBC clip. It also showed him being unironically interviewed by TV3CAT out of Catalonia, with the reporter asking, “Why are you here today?”
Barbieri was shown, on air, answering, “It's not that we think Trump is innocent. It's that we don't care.”
CBS’s eye-in-the-sky footage also picked up Barbieri as correspondent Robert Costa reported, “Trump supporters across the country, there's anger and frustration right now. And Trump campaign officials are arguing this is going to make Trump stronger inside the party.”
Meanwhile, he was also shown telling a British reporter, “They say he's guilty of fraud. What does fraud even mean? What's it mean? I don't know, do you know?”
After the reporter explained, “Election fraud is what they found him guilty of. By hiding information that voters might have used to vote differently. That's essentially what they found him guilty of,” Barbieri continued in his role as the dumb MAGA voter, “Okay, well, maybe he did that, but he’s not guilty.”
Other outlets that got fooled include Mediaite, which ironically first reported the CNN-Walker prank, the Guardian, and even Fox News.
Here are transcripts for the May 30 shows:
NBC News Special
5/30/2024
5:08 PM ET:
LAURA JARRETT: Savannah, it’s a resounding victory for the prosecution in a case that they pitched as something far greater than about hush money. The way they tried to cast this case was about the subversion of democracy. And today the jury agreed with them, Savannah. The former president has tried to cast this as a political prosecution. A political hit job by a Democrat-elected D.A., by a judge that was biased against him. But these 12 jurors, these 12 New Yorkers have come to a different conclusion, an independent conclusion that the former president of the United States is guilty of 34 felony counts.
You can hear the crowd here. There’s a lot of Trump supporters out here that you can hear, are very worked up as I was reading the verdict, I could hear the crowd. Emotion growing behind me. I'm only a couple yards away from the area that you can see on your screens right there, sort of, the First Amendment area, if you will. Just a stone's throw away from the press area. It’s been growing as the day went on.
It’s growing after they heard that this verdict was coming in. A lot of emotions running very high in the city right now. Again, this is the presumptive GOP nominee in the middle of an election year for things that he did that the prosecution said that he did to try to corrupt the last election. A remarkable scene playing out right here in Lower Manhattan.
***
ABC Jimmy Kimmel Live!
5/30/2024
11:43 PM ET
FOREIGN REPORTER: Why are you here today?
TONY BARBIERI [AS JAKE BYRD]: We're here to support the real president, Donald Trump.
[ON TV3CAT]: It's not that we think Trump is innocent. It's that we don't care.
LIDIA HEREDIA SOLER: [Speaking Foreign Language]
BARBIERI: Up top. Thank you.
SOLER: Thank you
…
ROBERT COSTA [CBS]: Trump supporters across the country, there's anger and frustration right now. And Trump campaign officials are arguing this is going to make Trump stronger inside the party.
…
BARBIERI: They say he's guilty of fraud. What does fraud even mean? What's it mean? I don't know, do you know?
BRITISH REPORTER: Election fraud is what they found him guilty of. By hiding information that voters might have used to vote differently. That's essentially what they found him guilty of.
BARBIERI: Okay, well, maybe he did that, but he’s not guilty.
