MRC Adds Conspiratorial Twist To Defense Strategy On Trump’s (Fourth) Indictment

As with his first three indictments, the Media Research Center ran to Donald Trump’s defense on his fourth indictment with its usual distraction-and-whataboutism strategy. The first mention of Indictment No. 4 came in an Aug. 15 post by Curtis Houck, who predictably whined that it was being covered and suggested a conspiracy theory that the indictments are some kind of scheme to hide right-wing narratives about alleged Biden scandals:

It’s like clockwork with the liberal media and their friends in government as, following more bad news and new allegations of bribery, corruption, and malfeasance from the Biden family, another Trump indictment dropped Monday night with this one emanating out of Fulton County, Georgia and far-left District Attorney Fani Willis. On Tuesday morning, the morning news shows of ABC, CBS, and NBC shoveled off 33 minutes and 17 seconds for the indictment.

Not surprisingly, the prospect of the indictment in the days leading up to it and the January 6 case gave the liberal networks all the excuses in the world to ignore the Bidens with zero seconds since Sunday morning on CBS and then Monday morning on ABC and NBC.

[…] [ABC] Senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott was ebullient at the Trump frenzy (likely seeing as how she doesn’t have to talk about the Bidens, the economy, education, or any other issue that’d be a lefty pitfall), boasting Trump “very likely…could be spending more time in the courtroom than campaigning” in 2024.

Houck offered no reason  for labeling Willis as “far-left.”

Nicholas Fondacaro complained that MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell “took to her eponymous show on Tuesday to openly fret that former President Trump’s “opponents” might be suffering from “indictment fatigue” after the district attorney of Fulton County, GA indicted him for the fourth time. Of course, the crux of her concern was that the harm to Trump’s presidential campaign would be minimized.” Kevin Tober bizarrely framed Trump’s multiple indictments as “election interference” instead of justice:

On the day after former President Donald Trump was indicted for a fourth time by a partisan prosecutor, NBC Nightly News admitted that these indictments were having the effect of full-blown election interference that benefitted the Biden campaign and Democrats in the 2024 election. 

“This fourth indictment puts Mr. Trump’s legal troubles on even more of a collision course with his campaign. So far, it appears to have boosted the Republican front-runner,” anchor Lester Holt proclaimed. 

Picking up where Holt left off, senior congressional correspondent Garrett Haake optimistically reported that “the historic fourth indictment of Donald Trump tonight shaking up the 2024 campaign.”

[…]

NBC, like the rest of the left-wing media, was clearly happy that a former President and current candidate was under a constant barrage of indictments. 

They should be careful what they wish for. As Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning, “Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain: the glass has now been broken over and over again. Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail–on all sides.”

Tober offered no evidence that Biden or any other Democrat has committed offenses on a level to which Trump has been credibly accused.

Mark Finkelstein claimed that “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough “took a surprisingly more sober view” of the latest indictment:

In particular, he said that he was concerned that the indictment was brought in heavily Democratic Fulton County.

Scarborough wondered how people would react if, say, a prosecutor in Holmes County, in the Florida panhandle, which voted 87 percent for Trump in 2020, indicted a Democratic president. Joe pondered why the case couldn’t have been brought in another county, and if perhaps prosecutors elsewhere declined to proceed.

And if Scarborough’s concerns were valid when it comes to Fulton County, which went 72.65 percent for Biden in 2020, how much more so in Washington, D.C., where Jack Smith has brought his January 6th case against Trump? The District of Columbia went for Biden over Trump by the overwhelming margin of 92 percent-5 percent!

Greg Bluestein of the liberal Atlanta Journal-Constitution made the case for the indictment being brought in Fulton County, noting that many of the facts alleged in the indictment, including the infamous “perfect” phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, took place there.

[…]

Scarborough was careful to maintain his liberal street cred by saying no fewer than three times that he found Trump’s activity in Georgia “abhorrent,” adding, “and appears illegal.”

Tim  Graham spent his Aug. 16 column trying to portray Trump as a victim of partisan prosecutors:

Here we go again. The Democrats have unfurled a fourth indictment of former President Donald Trump, this time in Fulton County, Georgia. The number one media-bias complaint on this trend – other than how these indictments “flood the zone” and devolve the Republican presidential primary into a hyperbolic courtroom drama – is that reporters typically fail to identify the prosecutors as Democrats.

The big Associated Press dispatch on this indictment by reporters Kate Brumback and Eric Tucker doesn’t identify District Attorney Fani Willis as a Democrat. They just quote her overzealous copy about how “the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result.”

In the penultimate paragraph, the AP duo noted Trump “is campaigning and fundraising around these themes, portraying himself as the victim of Democratic prosecutors out to get him.” But that’s general and not specific.

[…]

This has happened over and over again. New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg isn’t described in media accounts as an elected Democrat who ran on getting Trump. New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who sued Trump over business fraud, isn’t described as an elected Democrat who ran on getting Trump. They don’t talk about Jack Smith’s wife, the filmmaker who made a Netflix gushfest for Michelle Obama.

In this case, Fani Willis ran for D.A in 2020, and almost immediately began an investigation of Trump. All of these Democrat politicians are drawing adulation from Democrats – at the same time as reporters present them as nonpartisans.

Graham didn’t explain why it’s a bad idea for a prosecutor to voe to bring criminals to justice, or why Trump should be exempt from facing justice even if he committed crimes. He also fails to acknowldedge the flip side of his argument: A Republican prosecutor who refused to prosecute Trump for his crimes should, by his definition, also be accused to acting in a partisan manner.

P.J. Gladnick whined that John Dean appeared on TV to liken Trump’s indictments to Watergate:

It’s all too predictable. A scandal or merely an apparent scandal involving Republicans happens and one of the Watergate people, usually John Dean or Carl Bernstein, is brought aboard by the media to perform their “Worse than Watergate!” or “Bigger than Watergate!” shtick.

There’s nothing at all unusual about Dean invoking Watergate for the umpteenth time as part of his media circus act. Why bring on this 84-year-old pundit, if that’s not the point? Dean wrote a book in 2006 that mild-mannered George W. Bush was Worse Than Watergate. Last summer, Dean was the star of a four-part CNN special titled Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal.

In the case of the indictment of Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia (after it was prematurely announced before the grand jury even finished deliberating) CNN’s Kaitlan Collins inducted John Dean to perform his “Bigger than Watergate!” act.

Gladnick made no effort to disprove Dean, though.

Nicholas Fondacaro served up another time-count post, complete with conspiratorial suggestion that the indictment “gave the liberal media another excuse to move past and ignore the bribery and corruption allegations swirling around President Biden and his family,” though as with Houck, he didn’t explain why the Trump indictment shouldn’t be covered.

Graham rehashed all of this in his Aug. 16 podcast:

It didn’t take long for ABC, CBS, and NBC to devote an hour of stories to obsessing over the fourth Trump indictment — from Fulton Country, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis. Reporters typically avoid mentioning Willis is an elected Democrat who’s made it her primary mission to put Trump in jail. She had help with her indictment from a grand jury selected in Fulton County, which voted Biden over Trump by a margin of 73 to 26 percent. 

CNN and MSNBC obsess over this hour after hour. On networks like NPR, the only person aired criticizing Willis as a partisan is Donald Trump, a man they consider self-discrediting. Congressional Republicans somehow don’t have a newsworthy opinion.

NewsBusters Associate Editor Nick Fondacaro joins the show to share the climbing numbers of indictment stories, and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell worrying out loud about “indictment fatigue” and how voters just hear “white noise” in all the endless cable chatter about Trump. Bill Clinton used to suggest anyone obsessing over scandal wasn’t doing the people’s business. That spin is nowhere to be found today.

Graham didn’t explain in the writeup why anyone should consider Trump as anything but “self-discrediting.”