Amid the voluminous coverage on the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC this week on the start of the hush money trial brought by far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against former President Trump, Tuesday’s CBS Mornings whined not enough Americans care about this trial....like ABC’s Good Morning America, who was tickled pink about Trump suffering.
CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman had just finished explaining why this Trump trial is “significant because it’s first” and “is a solemn day in court when you put a former President...on trial” when co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King kvetched about the American public not being consumed by this.
“We should point out this is not normal. You know, Donald Trump always says he’s a — it’s a witch hunt, everyone’s against him, that it’s unprecedented, but also his behavior, for a lot of people, is unprecedented,” King huffed.
She then added the times we’re living in are “just not normal” and, despite all these histrionics, she’s “worr[ied] that the audience just hears white noise when they hear all of these cases running together.”
Klieman gave King much of what she probably wanted to hear:
They may, but this is the first one that actually is going forward, so the attention will be on this one. But, no, it is not normal. Nothing about this follows legal norms in a courtroom. It may happen this time because Judge Merchan is strict and he’s going to run a courtroom the way it should be run, but 34 felonies for business records? Not normal.
Over on ABC, co-host and former Clinton flack Stephanopoulos giddily told chief Washington correspondent and three-time bestselling anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl that after having spent a year “talking about the political and legal calendars clashing”, Monday finally arrived.
Stephanopoulos added Monday “felt” like a change in “the dynamic...from” the past “when Donald Trump was so convinced” the charges would be boon for his campaign.
Karl beamed in announcing he saw “it in his behavior, in his demeanor” with Monday having been “a wake-up call for Donald Trump” in the form of “his new reality” as “now criminal defendant Trump”.
Clearly excited (and perhaps about the idea of a fourth book to hawk about Trump), Karl looked enthused at the idea of “see[ing] the bitterness, the anger” and “energy drained from” Trump:
Sure, he’s been indicted four times, he’s had to go to his indict — go to his arraignments, but now, he has to be inside a non-descript courtroom in lower Manhattan day after day against his will. He must be there and he is in a courtroom where he has no control. The judge is the boss and, for the most part, he has to be silent. You could see the bitterness, the anger, I think, the — the energy drained from him when he walked out of that courtroom at the end of the day. That was a different Donald Trump. And, look, he was restrained yesterday. He didn’t violate the gag order. He didn’t lash out at anybody. But how is this going to affect his psyche and his behavior as he does this for the next roughly two months?
To see the relevant transcripts from April 16, click here (for ABC) and here (for CBS).
