When last we left off, the Media Research Center was lovingly portraying Donald Trump as a victim as his trial in New York heated up. In an April 23 post, Tim Graham whined that CNN host Dana Bash “pulled out the usual ‘No Evidence fussing” when South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem portrayed the Trump trial as a conspiracy by Democrats to keep Trump in a courtroom and not on the campaign trail. Graham also cheered that Noem stated that prosecutors are “using a woman’s testimony [Stormy Daniels] who signed a letter saying that this affair did not happen, that she has testified in the past that this never occurred.” It was not mentioned that the MRC spent decades touting a woman, Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her even though she testified under oath that it never happened.
As the trial moved to the stage of the initial incident behind the changes — Trump’s payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels to cover up their affair during the 2016 election — the MRC started taking more aim at Daniels herself. A May 8 post by Mark Finkelstein cheered that a commentator criticized Daniels’ testimony:
MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos has once again proven himself to be an independent thinker, someone who calls them as he sees them and doesn’t dutifully toe the liberal media line.
[…]Cevallos was back at his iconoclastic truth-telling on today’s Morning Joe. He repeatedly called Stormy Daniels’ testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial a “major issue” available to the defense for the appeal of any possible conviction, which could lead to it being overturned. The notion was that her testimony was excessively prejudicial to Trump. Cevallos analogized the situation to the recent overturning of one of Harvey Weinstein’s convictions on the grounds that overly prejudicial testimony had been admitted.
Cevallos mentioned that even though trial judge Juan Merchan had rejected a defense motion for a mistrial based on Daniels’ testimony, he did acknowledge that some of her testimony perhaps should not have been allowed.
Finkelstein followed up with a post two days later complaining that Trump’s sleaziness as displayed through Daniels’ testimony will hurt him with women voters — and still found a way to play whataboutism:
On CNN This Morning, CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston said that porn star Stormy Daniels claiming in court that Donald Trump didn’t use a condom (“protection”) during their alleged sexual encounter constitutes a “sordid detail” that will hurt Trump with women voters in swing states.
[…]Host Kasie Hunt gleefully agreed with Preston, chuckling as she said, “It’s all very sordid.” No qualifiers from anyone on the panel about the porn star’s claims being “alleged.” The veracity of her testimony was seemingly taken as a given. And CNN has been gavel-to-gavel “sordid” during Stormy Daniels Week.
Meghan Hays, a former Biden aide, was also only too happy to agree, saying that come September and October, those sordid “details” would be highlighted in TV ads targeting moderate women voters.
Preston should know a thing or two about sordid sexual details in the lives of prominent politicians. He’s a former aide to . . . Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Graham complained in his May 10 podcast that HIllary Clinton went on “Morning Joe” to talk about the trial and Daniels:
Now we’re reliving 2016 in a Manhattan courtroom, and Stormy Daniels was the star witness this week. The richest vein of hypocrisy was Hillary accusing Trump on hush money. He “went to such great lengths to try to squash, bury, kill stories, pay off people, because he understood the electoral significance of them.” As if the Clintons never tried to squash and kill stories by female accusers!
Graham didn’t mention that what Trump did in working with the National Enquirer to squash the story before the election is “election interference,” but its own definition of what it accused the non-right-wing media did with the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The next day, Graham touted Bill Maher trashing Daniels’ testimony:
On Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the host complained about how the Democrats from Merrick Garland on down “blew it at every turn” on creating legal problems for Trump, so now before the election, “it’s Stormy or bust.” Even there, Maher argued porn star Stormy Daniels is a “bad witness” because she has changed her story in front of this jury, from empowered porn actress to victim.
Maher said: “Let me show you a little video. This is when I had Stormy on in 2018 and first I asked her about why she had sex with trump. Listen to that, and then listen to what she says after that and we’re going to talk about the trial because it’s quite at variance with what she said to me in 2018.”
First she said “I have no idea” why she allegedly had sex with Trump. Maher said “you said this is not a #MeToo case,” and she agreed: “I wasn’t attacked or raped or coerced of blackmailed… they tried to shove me in the #MeToo box to further their own agenda. First of all, I didn’t want any part of that because it’s not the truth and I’m not a victim in that regard.”
Maher said “That’s not what she’s saying now. She’s talking about he was bigger and blocking the way. It’s all the #MeToo buzzwords. She said there was a power, an imbalance of power for sure. My hands were shaking so hard. Said she blacked out. Blacked out? She’s a porn star!”
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni tried to joke he might black out with Trump, too. Maher crudely said she has sex with strangers routinely.
New York Post columnist Douglas Murray agreed with Maher: “Everyone who is hanging on the hope of Stormy Daniels being the way to get Trump in prison is going to have another disappointment coming.”
Graham rehashed a lot of this in his May 15 column:
It’s hard to watch the incessant gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Donald Trump trial in Manhattan without feeling like you’re traveling in a time warp back to 2016. We’re back reliving the “Access Hollywood” tape and talk of how Trump would have never been elected except porn star Stormy Daniels accepted a six-figure check to keep quiet.
The richest vein of hypocrisy on this adultery-mangles-electability question flows through the Clintons. Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to denounce Trump for squashing the bimbo stories. It was typically shameless. She said: “I think the defendant, the former president, knew exactly what he was doing when he went to such great lengths to try to squash, bury, kill stories, pay off people, because he understood the electoral significance of them.”
Again, Graham didn’t mention the fact that, by his employer’s own definition, election interference took place. Still, he did concede that paying hush money to a porn star is probably not a good look, yet he finds a way to play the Clinton Equivocation card anyway:
One can only imagine how Melania Trump processed the Stormy Daniels tale, but paying a non-disclosure agreement isn’t exactly maintaining your innocence. That’s why the Democratic prosecutors in New York are pumping this out on CNN and MSNBC, hour on the hour. The Left thinks those religious conservatives are bothered by this, and it should cause them to vote for someone else, preferably that “devout Catholic” Joe Biden.
But Hillary has always waged war on anyone who would seek to damage her and Bill’s future in politics, and the media have always gushed over her warfare.
Graham whined further:
The “larger story” was the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” In this election cycle, Democratic prosecutors lobbed 91 felony charges at Trump, and the networks largely refuse to even describe them as Democrats, let alone a vast left-wing conspiracy.
Neither Graham nor the MRC has proven the existence of a “left-wing conspiracy” — they have simply played guilt-by-association that proves nothing but gets right-wing clicks.