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It started, arguably, with a Truth: a Donald Trump Truth Social post, one Saturday last March, in which he stated that he would be arrested three days later, in New York, on charges that he illegally covered up hush money payments to silence the porn star Stormy Daniels’s claims of an affair ahead of the 2016 election. The post kick-started a media circus that persisted through the actual date of his arrest two and a half weeks later; news coverage endlessly weighed the historic nature of the story and the political ramifications over footage of Trump’s plane on the tarmac in Florida, Trump’s plane en route to New York, Trump’s motorcade making its way to court. Amid all the excitement, some observers expressed skepticism about what at least one legal pundit called “the stripper case”: as to whether the proceedings would be all that interesting, or whether the prosecution’s legal theory would stand up in court. The Washington Post’s editorial board declared the indictment “a poor test case for prosecuting a former president.” The charges had not, at that point, been unsealed.
Fast-forward to last month, and the circus started up again as Trump’s trial in the case got underway; initially, the coverage felt a bit half-hearted in some quarters, but it soon cranked into full gear. Fast-forward to this week, when the trial wrapped up and Jury Watch began. Jurors asked to re-hear portions of testimony and the judge’s instructions; media observers debated what it might signify. There was speculation that one juror who had smiled at Trump during the trial might hold out on prosecuting him, and, if so, that they might be the same juror who indicated during the selection process that they get their news from Truth Social. As deliberations continued, cable networks timed how long they’d been going on (not that they could agree on when to start and stop the clock). On air, “the phrase ‘tea leaves’—a cliched reference to predicting an event’s outcome based on signs that may or may not mean anything—was heard more times than on a Bigelow’s factory floor,” David Bauder, of the Associated Press, noted. Seeking some—any—insight, CNN brought on various jury consultants and a juror who had served during the corruption trial of Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois. Cameras outside court broadcast nothing to thousands of people.
Suddenly, yesterday afternoon, we learned that the jury had reached a verdict. After half an hour or so more on the Bigelow’s factory floor—What might the timing of the verdict mean? Would the jury reappear looking jovial or somber?—the verdict came down, and score boxes appeared on-screen where the jury timers had been. Since cameras are banned in New York courtrooms, it fell to news anchors to read out the result for each of the thirty-four felony counts that Trump faced. They did so, as the New York Times noted, with the rapid-fire cadence of an auctioneer: Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty… Guilty.
Various text-based publications—from Rolling Stone to the Drudge Report—quickly splashed the word this many times for effect; others settled for using it once, in a font size reserved for wars, election results, or, as of now, post-presidential convictions. The New Yorker and Time magazine quickly released covers that showed, respectively, Trump presenting tiny hands to be cuffed and Trump’s flattened face staring up in shock at a judge’s gavel. In the hour or so after the verdict, CNN told viewers that it was “remarkable” (nine times), “historic” (eight), and “unbelievable” (three). Viewers were also treated to live footage of Trump speaking outside of court—“This was a rigged, disgraceful trial.…I’m a very innocent man”—and of his motorcade.
Meanwhile, right-wing media figures fulminated with an entirely predictable zeal. They said things like: “We have gone over a cliff in America.” (Jeanine Pirro on Fox.) “[The jurors] can never go anywhere without worry about being harassed…[prosecutors] have essentially ruined people for doing their civic duty.” (Carl Higbie on Newsmax.) “Revolution is in our DNA. We are fighters. And I hope it’s only at the ballot box.” (Pirro again.) “It’s not President Trump they’re trying to destroy—they’re trying to destroy you.” (Steve Bannon on Real America’s Voice.) “Donald Trump should make and publish a list of ten high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office.” (Matt Walsh on X.) “Import the Third World, become the Third World. That’s what we just saw.” (Tucker Carlson on X.) “[The verdict] feels almost preordained, like a Kabul wedding.” (Greg Gutfeld on Fox.) “We are going to get back up, we’re going to regain our strength, and then we’re going to vanquish the evil forces that are destroying this republic.” (Jesse Watters on Fox, and X.) “If Trump doesn’t win, we’re gonna become Russia, and the Soviet Union, and a banana republic.” (Rod Blagojevich, to Watters, on Fox.)
Back in the US, actual journalists were similarly quick to turn their eyes from The Historic to What Might Happen Next, albeit without all the visions of apocalyptic hellfire (for the most part). Will Trump go to prison? (Unlikely, at least anytime soon, the consensus seemed to hold; Trump is certain to appeal, and will not likely be incarcerated while that process plays out.) Will he still be allowed to run for president as a felon? (Yes, Eugene V. Debs said, while, presumably, spinning furiously in his grave.) Will he still be able to vote for himself for president as a felon? (The answer to this one seems to be: it depends.) “This is uncharted territory,” the Post’s Philip Bump noted, “as every person in the media has said at least once over the past three years.”
Bump was writing, specifically, about how the verdict might affect voters’ behavior come November. The answer, he concluded, “is unsatisfying: No one knows.” Not that a little thing like this stopped various news organizations, pundits, and pollsters from trying to work it out. “Guilty or not guilty, Trump verdict won’t sway most voters, poll shows,” a PBS headline read even before the verdict. “Will Trump’s guilty verdict hurt him? Read this story (not the polls),” a Politico headline countered afterward. A Newsday headline, citing “experts,” suggested that Trump’s conviction is “likely to have little impact” on the race. “Call me a cynic,” Puck’s Tara Palmeri wrote, “but it feels likely this moment will have faded from memory six months from now, and won’t be much of a factor for voters who somehow still haven’t made up their minds between Trump and Biden.” Other pundits declared this sort of thinking the prevailing narrative, then sought to knock it down, arguing variously that the verdict could yet prove determinative in a close race and that it will carry weight beyond the election. (Wild, I know.) Still others—including the Post’s editorial board, still stating that the case was “neither the most important nor the most legally compelling” against Trump—settled for noting that, either way, the voters will now decide.
Indeed, this fact seemed to offer a rare point of consensus between mainstream media and its not-so-funhouse right-wing counterpart yesterday. It was an apparent point of consensus, too, between the Trump and Biden campaigns. As the trial began to wrap up earlier this week, the latter organized a press conference, fronted by Robert De Niro among others, outside the courthouse—the chief locus of the media circus in recent weeks, and one that had previously been monopolized by Trump and his allies. When a reporter asked a campaign spokesperson why they’d decided to finally show up, they replied, “Because you all are here.” Indeed, figures in Bidenworld have reportedly been frustrated of late that so much media attention has been lavished on Trump and his trial. They think voters care more about various policy issues, per Politico—and that next month’s debate will be “a far more important moment to jostle the race.”
Is that a truth to end on? We don’t yet know that either—though we do know that the verdict isn’t really the end of this case, just as Trump’s Truth Social post last March wasn’t really the beginning of it. We know that the circus will move on; that different sets of tea leaves will be read; that pundits’ confident interpretations of them will continue to be embarrassingly wrong; that more motorcades will be televised. For now, the only other thing that’s certain is History. Say it one more time, for those at the back.
Other notable stories:
- A consequential story about the war in Ukraine got lost amid the Trump-trial fallout, with various outlets reporting that Biden has authorized Ukraine to strike Russian territory with US-made weapons, albeit only in limited, defensive circumstances. In other news about the war, Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, visited Moldova and the Czech Republic this week; in both countries, he pledged US support in the fight against Russian disinformation. And an investigation by Access Now, the Citizen Lab, and an independent analyst found that a number of reporters and activists—including at least one exiled Russian journalist and others connected to Russia and Belarus—have been targeted with the invasive spyware Pegasus inside the borders of the EU. It’s not clear who is responsible, but Russia and Belarus are not thought to have access to Pegasus.
- Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal laid off at least eight journalists who covered national and breaking news, the latest in a rolling wave of job cuts at the paper, which does not appear to be in financial ill health; in protest of the move, unionized staffers walked off the job for an hour and stuck Post-it notes outside the office of Emma Tucker, the editor in chief. In other media-labor news, Deadline reports that staffers of a podcast division at iHeartMedia are preparing to go on strike as they seek a contract with management. Unionized journalists at the New York Daily News declared no confidence in Andrew Julien, the executive editor, citing his passivity in the face of cuts. And The Atlantic’s union demanded more transparency after the magazine did a deal with OpenAI.
- Last week, Rest of World, a news site that covers the global impact of technology, published a story about its journalists’ efforts to test the responsiveness of various “tip lines” established to help fact-check viral mis- and disinformation in the midst of India’s election, concluding that the initiatives mostly struggled to provide conclusive or timely answers to fake or misleading prompts. Some subjects, however, pushed back on the accuracy of Rest of World’s story—and the site has now retracted it, with Anup Kaphle, the editor in chief, acknowledging various inaccuracies in its account as well as flaws in how the tests of the tip lines were conducted. Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton has more.
- Recently, the Australian edition of the Daily Mail published a photo showing Andrew Forrest, a mining mogul, kissing a woman in a park in Paris; the woman’s identity was unclear, but the Murdoch-owned Australian subsequently identified her as Leila Benali, an energy minister in Morocco, where Forrest’s company has business interests. Benali has since denied that she is the woman in the photo. According to Le Monde, the Moroccan press has been quick to demand answers over the story—a double standard, some critics believe, with its coverage of male politicians’ alleged conflicts of interest.
- And Le Monde spoke with Laurence Allard, a French researcher, about an AI-generated image of the slogan “ALL EYES ON RAFAH” that has gone massively viral online since an Israeli strike on the Gazan city killed dozens of people last weekend. The image has been effective because, unlike the reality, “it’s a smooth, polished image, with a soft palette, like an advert for summer camp,” Allard said. “‘All eyes are on Rafah,’ but no eyes have actually seen it. That’s the paradox of it.” The article is available in English here.
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Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other outlets. He writes CJR’s newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.