John Lauro, an attorney for Trump, called the indictment “an attack on free speech and political advocacy” during a CNN interview.
But Raskin said on MSNBC that Trump’s speech has nothing to do with it.
It’s his actions that led to the indictment.
“You have a right to say, for example, ‘Oh, I think that the meeting of the House and the Senate in joint session to count Electoral College votes is a fraud or is taking away Donald Trump’s presidency.’ You can say whatever you want,” Raskin said. “But the minute you actually try to obstruct the meeting of Congress, you crossed over from speech to conduct.”
He offered another example:
“It’s like, y’know, you can say, ‘Well, I think the currency is phony and everybody should be allowed to make up their own money.’ You can say that. But the minute you start printing your own money, now you’ve run afoul of the counterfeit laws. And it’s the exact same thing with the Electoral College.”
In this case, he said, Trump didn’t simply express ideas about the election with his debunked claims of fraud but also assembled “counterfeit electors” to attempt to substitute for the real electors.
“At that point, they’ve crossed over from speech to conduct,” he said.
Raskin said the Jan. 6 committee last year accused Trump of aiding and abetting and giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists ― but special counsel Jack Smith didn’t charge the former president on that count.
He said he believes it so prosecutors don’t have to argue on grounds of speech and can focus entirely on conduct.
Raskin called the evidence against the former president “overwhelming.”
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tore into Donald Trump on Friday after the former president said it would be “dangerous” for special counsel Jack Smith to send him to jail.
Trump had told an Iowa radio station this week that the possibility of jail time is a “very dangerous thing to even talk about, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters — much more passion than they had in 2020 and much more passion than they had in 2016.”
Scarborough said Trump was “talking like a mobster.”
“He’s just so stupid,” the broadcaster said on his “Morning Joe” program. “He’s going up against the feds. He doesn’t understand that he can’t bully and bluster and threaten his way out of criminal charges that are coming, because he broke the law.”
Trump whipped his voters into a frenzy after losing his 2020 reelection bid, ultimately inspiring a number of them to lay siege to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to keep him in power.
Smith, who is investigating that incident and Trump’s handling of classified materials after leaving office, recently sent the former president a letter informing him that he’s a target of the Jan. 6 probe.
The move indicates that Trump could soon be charged in the case.
Last month, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 felony counts in the documents investigation, alleging that the former president improperly took and stored classified materials, intentionally obstructed efforts to retrieve them and risked national security.
“He’s going to be charged for some of the most serious crimes in America,” Scarborough said on his show. “And his response, instead of talking to his lawyer, saying, ‘Hey, get me a deal, because they got me dead to rights, my own people are the people testifying against me’ ― instead of that, he goes on an Iowa radio show and, like a mobster, threatens Jack Smith.”
Midway through rewatching an 18-year-old episode of The Office, I had an epiphany. Suddenly, the contours of the 2024 presidential election started to make sense. The series, which ran 2005–2013, is a time capsule: Look, these employees all show up in person and slack off without Slack! There are no “hot desks,” just plain desks. And in the universe of The Office,Donald Trump is just a flamboyant reality star who likes to declare “You’re fired!” The time in which the show is frozen is, I suppose, why I love to rewatch it.
I first got hooked on The Office by watching illicit copies of episodes shared through torrent sites, back when Netflix shipped DVDs and Hulu sounded like it pertained to hoops. I liked the characters enough to become a faithful broadcast viewer, though, tuning in to NBC for appointment viewing, right at the point in media history where time and day were starting not to matter.
Reliving the old episodes made me keenly aware of context—a character’s quip about Trump’s The Apprentice, innocuous and synergistic then, feels obnoxious now—but mostly it made me conscious about memory. Not only had I forgotten some regular characters, but I had memory-holed entire arcs. Plot twists and cliffhangers and recurring punch lines—everything unfurled almost like I was a first-time viewer, a newcomer to the world of The Office, when in fact I was such a dedicated fan that I once took an Office tour of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the show’s imagined hub. How could I remember so little? Why didn’t I recall more from my last binge? As I worried about the weaknesses of my own recollections, the looming rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden registered differently.
While polls have consistently shown that most Americans do not want to replay the 2020 election, we seem bound to anyway. Reruns can be surprisingly seductive, especially if the details are fuzzed over, a little or a lot. Familiar characters and settings can be comforting.
He said what? He defamed whom? And voters reacted how? Where is the next rally? What will they say next? Shh, the commercials are over.
Is this how I remembered it?
The United States is a gerontocracy and most people know it’s a problem, even though the political system isn’t providing solutions. One poll in mid-2022 found that only 3 in 10 Americans wanted Biden to run again, and barely 4 in 10 wanted Trump to run. But both men are, so they are the main actors in a show that we’ll be watching (or avoiding) for another year plus.
With Trump turning 77 and Biden approaching 81, age may be a frame for the entire election. And if this season is, not to belabor the metaphor, a rerun, then “Biden is too old” is likely to become one of the only storylines. Substitute “age” with “emails” and Biden with Hillary Clinton, and you’ll see what I mean. Democrats are pre-fuming about it. When I have talked with Biden family members and allies, they don’t deny age is a factor, they just express frustration that it gets turned into the only factor. This is in large part due to the incessant repetition of the right-wing media machine, which has redefined Biden as so aged that he cannot possibly lead. And this is the ultimate repeat.
ILLUSTRATION BY PAMELA WANG. PHOTOS FROM GETTY IMAGES.
There are some new faces this time around, however. Virtually all of the country’s top newsrooms have changed leaders in the past couple of years, which might mean less Trump-era barrage but also a loss of muscle memory. Millennials have been tasked with covering politicians more than twice their age: CNN has elevated Kaitlan Collins, 31, to its long-vacant 9 p.m. time slot; NBC has a campaign trail star in Dasha Burns, also 31; and CBS has Robert Costa, 37. They exist in one realm of media—reportorial, meant to appeal to all, massively distrusted by MAGA warriors—while conservative commentators like the Daily Wire’s Candace Owens, 34, and Fox’s Kayleigh McEnany, 35, exist in another. This split is a relatively new phenomenon—Tucker Carlson, 54, was on MSNBC lo 15 years ago—but it’s critical to see it for what it is. The former tries to inform viewers while the latter seeks to activate voters. And when there’s a crossover episode between the realms, there’s a collision.
Part of whyTrump’s recent town hall on CNN was so controversial was because it was, for all intents and purposes, a repeat. In the spirit of this column, I rewatched Anderson Cooper’s March 2016 town hall with Trump. The similarities were uncanny, right down to the white CNN-logo mugs onstage. The main difference was that in 2016, Trump was still a political novelty. “Fact-checking” was barely a buzzword back then. Cooper did plenty of it, though, while expressing disbelief at some of Trump’s boasts—“You’re the only one who can solve terror problems in Pakistan?”—and channeling the audience’s exasperation with Trump’s childish conduct. “After saying that you were going to spill the beans about Heidi Cruz, you retweeted an unflattering picture of her next to a picture of your wife,” Cooper said. “Come on.”
Trump: “I thought it was fine. She’s a pretty woman.”
Cooper: “You’re running for president of the United States.”
Trump: “Excuse me, I didn’t start it. I didn’t start it.”
Cooper: “But, sir, with all due respect, that’s the argument of a five-year-old.”
“No, it’s not,” Trump said, adopting another schoolyard approach.
Everything about the Trump era was foreshadowed at that earlier town hall: his lies, his deflections, his denialism, and his demagoguery. Cooper caught Trump in multiple contradictions, but Trump’s answers weren’t the point: the projection of power was. On Jeb Bush: “I beat these people badly.” On Scott Walker: “I hit him very hard.” On Rand Paul: “I drove Rand Paul out of the race.”
I learned a lot about Trump when it originally aired. But now, is there anything truly new to learn about the man? Repeats can be as distressing as they are enticing.
“I had so many flashbacks to 2016” while watching the recent redux, said Amanda Carpenter, Ted Cruz’s former communications director turned Never Trump crusader. Carpenter was a paid CNN commentator back when I anchored the network’s Reliable Sources program. She told me she thought CNN organized the town hall as “a sweetener, an entrée to Donald Trump, to say, ‘Please let us be part of the 2024 political process.’ ”
At what cost? While some critics credited Collins for fact-checking, the smartest takes on the night argued that “checking” Trump doesn’t have that effect. “The conflict, and his bullying of the journalist, is the essence of the performance,” Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman tweeted afterward. “It says, ‘We will create our own reality. You have no power over us. And the more frustrated you get, the more we win.’ ” That’s what was happening when Collins, having interjected truth into yet another Trump yelp, said, “The election was not rigged, Mr. President. You can’t keep saying that all night long. You cannot keep saying the election was rigged.” But Trump could keep saying it, and he did.
Trump, who was indicted on 37 counts including allegedly keeping sensitive materials, told Fox News he has been too busy to go through all of the boxes he took from the White House.
“These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things,” Trump said. “Golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes.”
Wallace called it “remarkable” that the former president’s excuses have shifted so dramatically from insisting he can keep whatever he wants to claiming he just didn’t have the time to sort through the boxes.
“He’s so addled he’s talking about stuffing his pants in with his desk stuff,” she said on “Deadline White House” on Tuesday. “Why were his pants in with his papers? He sounds like a crazy hoarder.”
See more of her conversation with former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) below:
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) slammed Republicans over their allegations that President Joe Biden has ties to a bribery scheme as she contrasted GOP lawmakers’ responses to how they reacted to the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump.
“It is amazing that they can review one document and decide that we have the most corrupt president that ever existed,” said Crockett, who has gone after GOP lawmakers with a number ofcritical remarks in recent weeks.
She went on to look at how GOP claims about Biden conflicted with Republicans’ responses to “actual indictments” with “mounds of documents.”
“We’ve got actual indictments from New York as well as out of Florida from grand juries. Not necessarily the president as they tried to put out there, not necessarily our AG, not necessarily the special prosecutor but from citizens who sat down and reviewed not one document, but documents, mounds of documents,” Crockett said.
“And determined that there was enough to continue to go forward and decide whether or not Trump had violated law. And they say there’s nothing to see here,” she said.
Crockett later pointed out that the FBI allegedly received the document while the agency was part of Trump’s Justice Department.
“So yes, my chairman on oversight can’t find the witnesses,” Crockett said in a nod tocomments from Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) on the committee’s Biden family investigation.
“But we all know that Jack Smith has found all the witnesses that he needs to make sure that he can go forward with his prosecution of the former president,” Crockett said.
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) claimed Thursday that another source in the GOP’s Biden family probe has been missing ― for the last three years. The lawmaker complained to Fox News host Sean Hannity that MSNBCrides him over informants who have disappeared. (Watch the video below.)
Hannity asked Comer if he had any contact with an unidentified oligarch who claimed he bribed President Joe Biden as vice president.
Comer answered: “Unfortunately, nobody’s had any contact with him for the last three years. You know, MSNBC makes fun of me when I said that there are a lot of people that were involved in the Biden shenanigans that are currently missing. But with respect to this oligarch, we think we know where he is. He just hasn’t been seen in public in a long time, but we’re following the money.”
Comer raised eyebrows last month when he admitted to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo that a key informant was missing. He chalked it up to the mystery person likely being in the “spy business.” Comer indicated that others also could not be found.
“Nine of the 10 people that we’ve identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens, they’re one of three things,” he said. “They’re either currently in court, they’re currently in jail or they’re currently missing.”
Republicans have produced no proof of shady dealings by the president in their investigation.
As for Comer’s concern about MSNBC razzing him, that will likely continue. After Comer confessed to Bartiromo, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough had a field day.
“Come on! You lost an informant? You lost the informant, the guy that you claimed gave you all this information that you built this entire charade on!” the host exclaimed.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has seen his popularity crater in recent months even after announcing that he’s running for president, and one of his former colleagues says he knows why.
Former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.), who served in the House at the same time as DeSantis, said on MSNBC on Thursday evening that it’s because he’s a “uniquely unlikeable person.”
“As you get to know him, you discover it’s this odd mix of vanity and paranoia and kind of the smartest-person-in-the-room complex,” Jolly said. “The problem is the moment that he demonstrates his intelligence he says things that are antithetical to science and history and law and the Constitution and it leaves people kind of scratching their head.”
He said DeSantis does have some political skills ― including recognizing where his party is going.
“He was in front of the Tea Party wave, he was an early evangelist for Trumpism,” he said, and added that he “basically created” the GOP’s current culture war movement.
And he said that if anyone among the current GOP candidates might beat Trump, it’s DeSantis, and suggested how he might do it:
News networks had a marathon day of coverage on Tuesday around Donald Trump’s second arraignment. After the former president surrendered to federal authorities in Miami and pleaded not guilty to dozens of alleged crimes related to his mishandling of classified documents, cameras followed him to Versailles, a Cuban restaurant, where he was greeted by a crowd of supporters singing Happy Birthday to him on the eve of his 77th trip around the sun. By that point, Jake Tapper had had enough. “The folks in the Control Room: I don’t need to see any more of that. He’s trying to turn it into a spectacle, into a campaign ad—that is enough of that. We’ve seen it already,” the CNN anchor said in the middle of his afternoon broadcast, before turning back to CNN legal analyst Elie Honig about the 37 charges that Trump was facing. Tapper wasn’t the only one using their discretion in this way, as The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona noted:
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As the Trump circus continued into Tuesday evening, so too did anchors’ decisive monitoring of their broadcasts. Neither CNN nor MSNBC carried Trump’s speech live from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he was holding the first fundraiser for his 2024 campaign. MSNBC anticipated that the address would be “essentially a Trump campaign speech,” just as his speech was following his first arraignment in April, Rachel Maddowexplained to viewers as Trump began his public remarks. “Because of that, we do not intend to carry these remarks live. As we have said before in these circumstances, there is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcast untrue things,” said Maddow. “We are here to bring you the news. It hurts our ability to do that if we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations—no matter who says them.” She added that “this is not a glib decision” and that MSNBC would “monitor the speech…if he says anything newsworthy, we promise we will turn that right around and bring it back to you.” On CNN, Anderson Cooper made a similar point, noting that CNN would monitor the rally for news and share anything noteworthy with viewers. Tapper said that they would not be carrying Trump’s remarks live “because frankly he says a lot of things that are not true and sometimes potentially dangerous.”
CNN’s Oliver Darcy, in his Reliable Sources newsletter, noted that the move “notably represented a departure from how the network handled Trump’s post-New York arraignment speech. In that case, under former boss Chris Licht, CNN aired most of Trump’s remarks.” I’m told that Licht, who left the network earlier this month following a disastrous Trump town hall and brutal Atlantic profile, saw Trump’s reaction as a key part of the story to cover and had communicated as much to staff. On Tuesday, though, anchors appeared newly empowered to do otherwise.
Meanwhile, Fox News and Newsmax carried Trump’s speech live. A chyron on Fox claimed, “TRUMP’S REMARKS IGNORED BY OTHER NETWORKS,” and, before Trump began speaking, Fox News Tonight host Brian Kilmeade referred to Trump as the “president of the United States.” Later, airing footage of President Joe Biden speaking at the White House side-by-side Trump speaking at Bedminster, a Fox News chyron read: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.”
The former president, she noted, had warned that his arrest would lead to “the biggest protest we have ever had” and predicted that the people of the country wouldn’t stand for it.
“There’s no shame in not having people protest your arrest and indictment,” she said. “Except when you have begged people to, and told people to, and in fact promised publicly that people would.”
That, she said, is “personally embarrassing” for Trump.
Fellow MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell said that’s bad news for Trump ― and the former president is now painfully aware of the fact that the crowds aren’t coming on his command anymore.
“Trump knows better than any of us: They’re not coming,” he said, then referred to the potential scene of a next possible indictment: “They wont come to Georgia. They’re not coming. That stuff is completely over… he doesn’t have that anymore.”
A former federal prosecutor said news that Donald Trump is that target of a criminal investigation means two very specific things.
And neither of them are good news for the former president, who was reportedly told he’s the target of the probe into his handling of classified documents.
Target is a “term of art” used by the Justice Department, Glenn Kirschner, who was a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, said on MSNBC on Wednesday night.
“It’s a two-part test,” he explained:
“One, a target is a person for whom prosecutors have substantial evidence linking them to the commission of a crime. And part two, it’s somebody that the prosecutors view as a, quote, putative defendant. In other words, it’s somebody that the prosectors intend to indict.”
“The fact that Trump fulfills both prongs of the target test is a pretty sure sign that we’re about to see Donald Trump indicted,” he added.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has made taking on “woke” a central part of his identity and a key to his 2024 presidential aspirations, even using the word seven times in 20 seconds during an event last month.
On Tuesday’s “Deadline White House,” she played a clip of DeSantis once again vowing to end “woke” if elected.
“I will be able to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology on the dustbin of history,” DeSantis said Fox News.
After the clip, Wallace let out a loud laugh.
“A woke mob did not storm the U.S. Capitol. A woke mob did not shoot up Uvalde. A woke mob does not represent the threat that domestic violent extremism does, but OK, Ron, you go get the woke mob,” she said:
Glenn Kirschner, a former U.S. Army prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst, explained how former President Donald Trump has a “determination to continue to directly incriminate himself” as he “digs his own legal grave deeper” in the wake of his CNN town hall event last week. (You can hear from Kirschner clip below)
Kirschner, in a video shared to his YouTube page, slammed CNN for their “ill-advised” decision to host Trump who he referred to as a man who tried to end American democracy.
“The jury awarded punitive damages [to Carroll]… Punitive damages are designed to deter Donald Trump from telling defamatory lies in the future. And of course, within days of that jury verdict, Donald Trump goes right out and he does it all over again,” Kirschner said.
“Donald Trump will not be deterred by a jury’s verdict or punitive damages… by a judge’s admonitions that he shouldn’t say things like this… by a judge’s protective order or gag order. You know what will deter Donald Trump? A jail cell.”
Kirschner, in his video, argued that Trump shouldn’t be “given a microphone and a platform to spew his lies.”
“Even if a byproduct of having that microphone, having that platform is he digs his own legal grave deeper because he continues to incriminate himself,” he said.
“It is time to deter Donald Trump. Because justice matters.”
MSNBC host Joy Reid panned CNN’s Anderson Cooper for his “straw man argument” in defense of his network hosting a town hall event with former President Donald Trump. (You can watch her remarks below)
Reid likened the event to a “MAGA version of the ‘Jerry Springer’ show’” as CNNtakesheat for Trump’s remarks including a “nasty person” jab at moderator Kaitlan Collins and his “whack job” comment aimed at E. Jean Carroll, who won a lawsuit against Trump after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse on Tuesday.
“We begin with the continued cleanup on aisle five at CNN,” said Reid.
The host, on Friday, looked at comments from CNN’s Chairman and CEO Chris Licht where he reportedly went to bat for the town hall. Licht, according to a Puck News report, “summoned” CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy to a meeting after he argued in a newsletter that it was difficult to see how Americans were served by Trump’s lies.
Reid then analyzed comments from Cooper, who she said was “scolding his own viewers” on Thursday. Critics slammed Cooper over his defense of the network as he argued that the town hall audience – who laughed and applauded Trump – is a “sampling of about half the country.”
“Now that is what you call a straw man argument,” Reid said of the CNN anchor’s remarks.
“Especially [when] the only two options available to you are listening to a former president mock a woman a jury found that he sexually abused while the audience laughs and applauds or pretending 74 million Americans who voted for Trump don’t exist.”
Cooper: You have every right to be outraged today and angry and never watch this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away? pic.twitter.com/xzVEgaGeDT
Reid added that voters didn’t need a “Trump pep rally” to understand who he is.
“He literally posts his garbage views on his fake Twitter every day and every media outlet reports on it,” Reid said.
“We get it, a lot of people like it and vote for it. But we don’t need CNN or John Malone or Elon Musk or Anderson Cooper to lecture us about how we should be forced to endure it, or that we should just get used to it. Because some of us actually know that that stuff is wrong.”
“A candidate willing to condemn the consolidation of corporate power, the evils of environmental racism and ever-increasing income inequality ― and a Kennedy to boot!” he said on Sunday night. “What more could Democrats ask for?”
Kennedy even met with Trump at one point to discuss a job in his administration.
“So forgive me if I don’t buy Kennedy’s left-wing ‘credentials’ and I’m not surprised he went on Tucker Carlson’s White Power Hour on Fox to promote his Democratic presidential bid,” Hasan said.
Then, he noted that while Kennedy has support from figures on the right, many of the “people who know him best” have publicly denounced his views: his own family.
“You can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep, or in the case of the twice-impeached, disgraced, now-indicted ex-president, the people they praise loudly on Fox News,” Wallace said Wednesday.
She showed viewers a clip from Trump’s Fox News interview, which aired Tuesday. “They’re all top of the line,” Trump said of Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Our guy’s not top of the line ― never was,” he added, referring to President Joe Biden.
Trump also called Xi a “brilliant man” and praised Kim and Putin as “very smart.”
Hooting with laughter, Wallace said: “I don’t even know where to start. No one called you top of the line. Ever!”
The MSNBC host noted that she typically avoids amplifying Trump or Fox News, but said that this rhetoric provided important context on the recent Republican-led efforts to strip back abortion rights, implement voter suppression laws and silence dissent in the Tennessee state legislature.
“It’s important to understand they’re not bodily functions. They’re not burping out random policies. They’re following their leader, who’s following the world’s most heinous authoritarians,” Wallace said. “And we showed you that to show you just how dangerous his rhetoric is.”
“He’s such an idiot, on top of all else,” she later added. “And he sounds like such a bleepin’ idiot.”
“It’s one Florida fascist or another, I mean that,” he said on Sunday night. “Don’t for a second think the Florida governor is any less extreme, any less dangerous, any less authoritarian than Donald Trump.”
DeSantis, Hasan noted, has struggled to differentiate himself from Trump on matters of policy while continuing his attacks on the LGBTQ community, the media, Dr. Anthony Fauci and more.
“DeSantis will take on everyone: The doctors! The media! The gays!” Hasan said. “But he won’t take on the former president.”
“His own people! His own buddies!” Hasan exclaimed. “They see him as a potential loser, too. The calls are coming from inside the house.”
Hasan said he’s reminded of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) describing the 2016 choice of Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)
“Choosing between those two, he said at the time, was like choosing between being shot or poisoned,” Hasan said.
MSNBC’s Alex Wagner asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Thursday if the Biden administration considers Fox News a news organization. That prompted a thoughtful response, at least at first. (Watch the video below.)
But the analysis gave way to a light exchange in which Wagner concluded with a wry smile: “So, I’m gonna say that sort of sounds like the White House doesn’t think Fox is a news organization, but we gotta leave it there.” Both laughed.
Wagner had mentioned Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s “whitewashing” of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection ― most recently through cherry-picked Capitol security video showing mundane moments during the attack. She showed President Joe Biden’s firm response to the conservative dismissal of events, noting that 140 officers were injured in insurrectionist violence that Carlson and some extremist Republicans are trying to downplay as innocent tourism.
“Does the White House consider Fox News a news organization?” Wagner asked Jean-Pierre.
Jean-Pierre replied that court depositions show that even Fox News does “not see Tucker Carlson’s show as news or even truthful. That is coming from the Fox leadership, that’s not coming from me. That is coming from them.”
A judge, in a 2020 defamation ruling siding with Fox News, ruled the “general tenor” of Carlson’s show should signal to viewers that the TV personality “is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’” Viewers should be skeptical, the judge added.
Documents released in Dominion Voting Systems’ ongoing defamation suit against Fox News seem to reinforce that point, showing that Carlson and other prime time personalities privately mocked Donald Trump’s 2020 election lies while promoting them on TV.
As for the legitimacy of Carlson’s latest round of denying the severity of the Capitol siege, Jean-Pierre said:
“It was an attack on democracy. It was an attack on our Constitution and you cannot whitewash that. Tucker Carlson cannot whitewash that. Anyone who doesn’t see with their own eyes what occurred cannot whitewash that. And so, the president’s going to stand with the police officers, he’s going to stand for truth. And clearly, that is not what Tucker Carlson believes in.”
That’s when Wagner attempted to sum up Jean-Pierre’s reply, with the two sharing giggles at the MSNBC host’s conclusion.
MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said he believes former President Donald Trump will throw “his own family members” under the bus if he’s hit with an indictment.
Kirschner, who spoke with Dean Obeidallah for his SiriusXM show on Friday, weighed in on the former president’s possible course of action as the two discussed Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran, who reportedly appeared before a federal grand jury investigating his mishandling of classified documents.
Corcoran, who communicated with federal officials as they looked for the return of documents and drafted a statement that all documents were turned over, has reportedly lawyered up amid the probe, according to Reuters.
A Department of Justice filing noted that the FBI uncovered over 100 classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate months after the drafted statement.
Kirschner told Obeidallah that Trump has typically burned everyone who comes within an “arm’s reach of him.”
“That’s true of his Cabinet officials when he was president. It’s true of his lawyers who end up being disbarred and potentially prosecuted,” Kirschner said.
The former federal prosecutor said it’s difficult to understand why people would compromise themselves for Trump; however, he added that there’s a “beauty” to it.
“Once Donald Trump gets indicted –- and he will be indicted –- he will throw every single person under the bus, including his own family members, if it will reduce his prison term by just one day or one hour,” Kirschner said.
“I still believe he will [be indicted] and I still believe he must if we are to save our democracy. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘justice delayed is justice denied,’ justice has been delayed, I hope it’s not entirely denied,” Kirschner said.
“But during the two year period, what message has the Department of Justice sent to the next wannabe dictator who might try to overthrow our government? ‘You know what, when you do it, we’re going to give you a full two years to figure out what your next move is.’ Boy, that is the opposite of promptly deterring criminal conduct.”
