The Media Research Center unsurprisingly didn’t take it well when Donald Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts in his New York trial. That continued on May 31, the second day after the verdict. Jorge Bonilla whined:
It is not enough, at Trump-deranged MSNBC, that former President Donald Trump has been found guilty in the New York business records trial. MSNBC is now arguing for imprisonment for Trump. “Lock Him Up”, if you will.
Watch as the panel discusses sentencing in the wake of District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s press conference (click “expand”):
[…]As the panel discusses Bragg’s press conference, wherein he did not directly answer the question of whether he would seek an incarcerative sentence for Trump, pleads for there to be a jail sentence. Former top Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, fresh off of declaring his prosecutorial man-love for Judge Juan Merchán, is now demanding that Trump be incarcerated. At this point, the masks are off.
Regime Media, having enabled this cooked-up trial, now wants to see it through to the end. And there is only one acceptable outcome- the imprisonment of Donald Trump. Election interference, indeed.
A short time later, Bonilla had another fit, this time over NBC hosting “presidential historian, or histerian to put it more accurately, Michael Beschloss” to discuss the verdict:
Thus, NBC Nightly News provides us with an answer to a question no one asked, to wit: what historical perspective can we expect from an anti-Trump hysteric who has howlingly referred to Trump as a “monster” and a dictator, while incessantly comparing President Joe Biden to Abraham Lincoln? Not much, really.
Beschloss delivered a less hysterical take than what his MSNBC viewers are used to, with many platitudes on the rule of law and acceptance of the rule of law. Essentially, he called on Trump to take the L in the name of “democracy”. Even so, he couldn’t resist the cheap shot- comparing the business documents trial with the events leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
Exit question: In Beschloss’s view, does America turn into a dictatorship if the guilty verdict is overturned on appeal due to reversible error or on constitutional grounds?
Intern Mary Clare Waldron got to tout a Trump apologist:
Among the multitude of overjoyed news reporters, Friday’s CBS Mornings was no exception, but Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) burst some bubbles, while explaining many parts of the trial which were either downplayed or ignored outright.
Cotton explained to co-host Tony Dokoupil that the verdict from Trump’s trial will mean little overall in November and strongly criticized its legitimacy:
[…]It was no surprise Dokoupil and featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers were not pleased with Cotton’s remarks, questioning his view of the trial, his civics and whether he objects purely because his candidate did not win:
Alex Christy served up a coverage complaint:
Former President Donald Trump gave a speech on Friday to denounce his conviction and the preceding trial, but of the three main networks, only NBC bothered to break into their regular scheduled programming and carry it live and give their audience Trump’s perspective.
Trump began speaking at 11:06 a.m. Eastern and included a special report from anchor Lester Holt and correspondent Hallie Jackson. Trump spoke for 20 minutes until they cut him off to analyze his remarks with senior legal correspondent Laura Jarrett.
At the same time, ABC stuck with the liberal ladies of The View and CBS remained with Drew Carey and The Price is Right. CBS reporter Kathryn Watson tweeted the network would only break in if Trump took questions. Later in the day, it would cover President Joe Biden’s press conference about Israel’s latest ceasefire proposal.
[…]The price of the trial might be right for Trump opponents, but the price is wrong for Trump and his supporters, and the media owe it to the American people to hear Trump make his case for why the whole thing was a sham.
But hadn’t Trump been doing that outside the courthouse all through the trial? What did he add afterwards that forwarded his argument — an argument which, by the way, was discredited by a unanimous jury verdict of guilty on all 34 charges? And nobody was stopping anyone actually wanting to hear what Trump had to say from flipping to a different channel.
The head of the MRC was, of course, given an opportunity to rant about the verdict, repeating a biased MRC coverage “study” — that completely omitted Fox News — from a couple days earlier, ranting that it was “dishonest” for the trial to be covered:
Hours after a jury in far-left Manhattan found former President Trump guilty Thursday on all 34 counts in Soros-backed D.A. Alvin Bragg’s sham trial, Media Research Center’s Founder and President Brent Bozell joined Mark Levin on his syndicated radio show to discuss the MRC’s bombshell study on network coverage of the trial and the “frightening” simpatico between the Biden regime and the liberal, “neo-Marxist” media.
[…]Bozell then argued the instances of burying and/or omitting key facts of the trial on ABC, CBS, and NBC weren’t “bias by ignorance” but rather “a deliberate attempt to go in for the kill for the Biden campaign” and do the bidding of the President.
“I think it’s got to be the most dishonest media performance I’ve ever seen and by God, I’ve seen a lot,” he added.
Is it more or less dishonest than Bozell smearing non-right-wing media as “neo-Marxist” for no reasl reason beyond inflaming his audience? Bozell, of course, said nothing about Fox News’ coverage, which was much more favorable, whether the MRC wants to admit it or not.
Curtis Houck was angry that CBS allowed someone to rebut Cotton’s Trump sycophancy:
Discussing the Trump verdict in the second hour of Friday’s CBS Mornings, chief political analyst John Dickerson and CBS Saturday Morning co-host Michelle Miller acted as the unofficial Democratic response to Senator Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) interview from earlier as the partisan journalist (Dickerson) and wife of a far-left activist (Miller) smeared Trump voters as possessed with “cultish behavior” and “dangerous” views supporting a man who will “undermine” the country.
Featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers kicked it off with an attempted historical comparison suggesting Republicans are too extreme compared to the 1970s when a chorus of congressional Republicans forced then-President Richard Nixon out.
Dickerson huffed that “politics has changed so much, since” then, chiefly Republicans not respecting democracy because “we saw a test to the electoral system after 2020 when the loser of that race lied, and then some amount of the party rallied behind him” with “an attack on the Capitol” and have still refused to respect “norms.”
He then trashed Cotton for denouncing the partisan leanings of Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg as “very dangerous,” because Cotton and others were “now running down the legal system for the purpose as a way to protect the president.” He predicted such criticism could cause another January 6 and further “undermine” our “system” of governance.
Houck didn’t rebut those arguments — he was just angry someone had a platform to say them out loud. Tim Graham summarized all the verdict-related whining of the past couple days in his May 31 podcast:
The last 24 hours have been like drinking water out of a firehose for us here at NewsBusters as the liberal media have been sounding off nearly non-stop on former President Trump being found guilty on 34 felony counts. Managing Editor Curtis Houck and I pour out the media reactions into their respective buckets ranging from gleeful to a hunger for harsher punishments to a faux-sobriety that everyone can see through.
Houck notes that the faux-sobriety bucket was occupied by the likes of CBS’s Special Report where the panel of anchors and correspondents opined on the “extraordinary” moment America could herself in and the “enormous gravity” of the situation.
In that bucket, I include CNN’s Jake Tapper who has a personal hatred of Trump but pretended like he was dispassionate about the outcome of the case. I also point out that CNN legal analyst Karen Friedman Agnifilo soiled their coverage with the contents of the second bucket: the hunger for the harshest punishment.
Of course, it it had been Joe Biden on trial, Graham and the rest of the MRC would be swimming in that second bucket. Partisanship becomes before facts, after all.