Thursday’s CBS News Special Report on the guilty verdict for former President Trump reveled in the sham trial brought by far-left Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg as “an extraordinary moment” of “enormous gravity” in which “everything about politics and law and our orientation to both are convulsed as never before”, but bemoaned the incoming “grievance war” from the Trump team and took exception to longtime correspondent Jan Crawford’s reality check.
After it became known Trump was guilty on all 34 counts in the so-called “hush money” trial that’s interfered in the 2024 election, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell paused to collect herself before saying in hushed tones, “this is an extraordinary moment.”
Chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett concurred, saying “to hear you read what you just read is a moment of enormous gravity for this country” and something “we cannot overlook” as America has entered “completely uncharted territory”.
“This is not just a legal moment for this country. It is not just a political moment for this country. It is a moment where everything about politics and law and our orientation to both are convulsed as never before,” he added.
Chief elections and campaign correspondent Robert Costa also sounded concerned and bemoaned Team Trump won’t simply accept the verdict and instead “fight”, lamenting “they plan to mount a grievance war across the country” in what should be “a moment of seriousness for the country in a legal, political, and democratic front”.
After pointing out “there were cheers that went up in the park around us as the conviction was made clear”, Costa gloated the term convicted felon is “a tag that Donald Trump can no longer escape” and could haunt him with “swing voters in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the suburbs across the country”.
Not surprisingly, there was eager talk of whether Trump could face jailtime. Here was one such moment (click “expand”):
O’DONNELL: Can he vote?
GARRETT: Yes, cause he’s not — I mean, so he is not adjudicated fully, because the appellate process goes on, so it is not over until it's over, over and as Cy Vance indicated, that may take a considerable period of time, because the former President will try to find every venue possible, legal, to reevaluate and possibly overturn this verdict.
O’DONNELL: And in reading all the —
GARRETT: Until all that is done, he is a voter in good standing, to my understanding.
O’DONNELL: There are former prosecutors who have said that it is unlikely that a 77-year-old former President, since this is his first offence, would be sentenced to jail. But it could happen. but could he be elected president while serving prison time?
CRAWFORD: Well obviously that’s never happened, right? [GARRETT LAUGHS] But there is nothing that we know of that would stop that from happening. Even if he doesn't go to jail, I mean, there are a number of other options available to this judge including house arrest. What does that mean for the campaign? It is almost inconceivable —
O’DONNELL: Right.
CRAWFORD: — to kind of think about all, you know, the road ahead for us now as this political campaign starts with a convicted felon thus potentially the Republican nominee.
GARRETT: And our polling division and election analysts, Anthony Salvanto, others, know how difficult it has been, impossible Norah, to actually gauge what people's reaction is going to be if there was a conviction.
Garrett then proclaimed that, since America’s “now in the first hours of the country absorbing this”, there are no doubt those who are “enraged” and others finding “solace” in “accountability institutionally in our country” who are scared about what this means if he’s elected.
Before she irked the rest of the CBS panel, Crawford noted Trump “set the groundwork” for doubt about our system on Wednesday “saying that Mother Teresa would not have even beaten these charges and that the system was rigged” and that “people will believe that”.
Despite saying that and arguing “many people say that Donald Trump caused” Americans to lose “faith in our institutions”, she nonetheless faced serious pushback from O’Donnell and January 6 correspondent Scott MacFarlane when she simply stated the fact that Manhattan is an extremely liberal part of the country (click “expand” below the video):
MACFARLANE: There is going to be this process to try to discredit jurors. We have seen that in the previous prosecutions that are aligned to January 6 and the 2020 Election where they say it is a liberal jury in Washington, D.C., a liberal jury in Manhattan. Almost like there’s —
CRAWFORD: Well, there is a liberal jury in Manhattan.
MACFARLANE: And
CRAWFORD: I think that is hard to argue with.
MACFARLANE: — but from the moment the jurors met behind closed doors, you function as a jury. And the foreman had to get up and hold the microphone today and announce a verdict against a former U.S. President. And there is always is concern anybody related to the nexus of a Trump case has the threat of being threatened, doxed, or hassled.
O’DONNELL: But Jan, those jurors also swore that they could be impartial.
CRAWFORD: Oh, absolutely.
O’DONNELL: So, just to say that they’re from a liberal area —
CRAWFORD: But we can’t also, like, deny —
O’DONNELL: — that votes liberally and votes Democratic does not mean that they did not promise under oath that they could be impartial.
CRAWFORD: And I certainly am not implying that. I'm saying that we have to acknowledge what the facts are, because those are facts that the American people are going to hear.
GARRETT: To — to Jan's point, inferences will be drawn.
O’DONNELL: Yeah.
GARRETT: Inferences in the political dialogue across this country will be drawn about the composition of this jury and the location of this case.
Thankfully, Crawford wasn’t pounced on when she offered a second reality check, which was that there’s questions to be answered for “why the case wasn't brought initially under the previous district attorney and why the federal government didn't pursue these federal election charges against Trump.”
“I mean, there’s a number of questions people are going to have, there’s number of questions that Trump is going to raise on appeal starting from the very beginning with the indictment itself, and how some of — you know, what was some of those underlying object offenses? There are constitutional issues that he can raise,” she correctly stated.
To read the relevant CBS transcript from May 30, click here.
