As you may have heard, Donald Trump threw a hissy fit at the judge and then stormed out of the Centre Street courthouse Thursday morning. The adults went back to court after lunch, because that’s what adults do, while the GOP frontrunner and defendant, hightailed it to downtown Manhattan where he got in front of a microphone and raged. While lawyers argue such points as “the exaggeration of cash on hand in the financial statements is significant,” as Trump’s financial fate is being determined, he and his lawyer, Alina Habba, are busy crying about “the kids were dragged into this” (Eric and Don Junior, both men in their 40’s and executives of the Trump Organization) and “I never saw that woman!” (In response to a query about E. Jean Carroll.)

The perverse logic of Trump doing a press conference is the same as him doing a town hall on Fox News last night while the other two candidates for the GOP nomination for president in 2024, engaged in a town hall on CNN. He’s doing counter-programming. He couldn’t face the same audience as his opponents last night, nor could he face his opponents, period. He can’t be in the same courtroom today where lawyers are arguing facts and law. So he’s counter-programming, hoping desperately to try the Trump Organization case in the court of public opinion. Here’s what it looks like.

And this makes it sound like the Trump Organization was run by 10-year-olds — which actually is about right, come to think of it. Except for Daddy, who’s closer to being an 8-year-old emotionally.

Or, maybe she calls them “kids” because she’s going to be their step mom in the not too distant future. That will be interesting. Step mom Melania is at least a few years older than they are, 53 to Junior’s 45. Alina is 39, like Eric. Just a random thought, as we continue.

And Letitia James was not the attorney general in 1989 or in any kind of position of authority which would have influenced Exxon in any way. This is pure propaganda. Pure madness, put on the air to impress the base.

What’s that you say? Didn’t Trump leave court to return to his grieving wife? Oh, yeah. That.

Here’s something new and it’s about time: CNN is doing a fact check of Trump’s daily foray into fantasy.

This is what we need to see more of. Television news had its part in allowing Trump to get as far as he did in 2016. It normalized him. It didn’t fact check him or call him out. Journalism is about truth, about speaking truth to power. It’s about facts. People need to hear Trump’s lies exposed as such.

Maybe this is a harbinger of what we can finally expect. Maybe, in 2024, CNN and the other outlets will finally do their job and fact check Trump. That was certainly be a beginning towards restoring faith in the public airwaves, the faith that was destroyed after Reagan demolished the Fairness In Broadcasting doctrine, which set the stage for the Tower of Babel in which we presently dwell.

 

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6 COMMENTS

  1. I’m enjoying every minute of this. When Engoron’s judgment comes down, the monster child will go apoplectic ape. But before that happens, he’ll have just enough time to set the table for Carroll III. There just isn’t enough popcorn.

    35

  2. The ‘court of public opinion’ isn’t much good when you’re being tried in an actual court of law.

    More importantly public opinion follows strongly what courts decide, due to their decisions having been made using actual facts and truth.

    So after losing in a court of law, you lose the ‘court of public opinion’ anyway.

    15

  3. Habba-Dabba’s whining about the “kids [being] dragged in, just like the other defendants” is rather interesting, especially coming from a (cough)lawyer(hack). For starters, the “kids” were part of the business–unlike Donald’s OTHER two kids, Tiffany and Barron (the latter of whom is the only *real* “kid” in the group)–and, generally, when there’s a trial, people are often “dragged in” to a case if they have relevant knowledge to that case; of course, they’re only “dragged in” if they don’t want to cooperate of their own volition.
    It works that way in criminal cases as well as civil cases (at least, the ones that are able to make it to court–there IS, after all, a reason so many businesses insist on “arbitration” clauses in the event of some kind of “dispute”).

    12

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