No, Georgia Republicans cannot just magically remove Fani Willis and rescue Donald Trump
Over the weekend, the Georgia Senate passed legislation that would give the state government the ability to remove any District Attorney in the state for unspecified “misconduct.” This set off a tidal wave of doomsday hysteria about how this meant Georgia Republicans were going to be able to fire Fulton County DA Fani Willis and magically save Donald Trump from being indicted and prosecuted. This culminated with a story on MSNBC last night that left audiences so paralyzed with fear and defeatist outrage, they then spent all night melting down on social media about how Trump had “gotten away with it all.”
Hold your horses. The media’s doomsday framing of this story, and the resulting collective freakout of audiences, are so far removed from what’s really going on here that it’s difficult to know where to start. You see, even as media personalities tripped over each other to see who could portray this story in the most defeatist (and therefore most ratings-friendly) fashion, they skipped over a whole lot of steps and details.
Yes, the Georgia Senate has passed this legislation. And yes, the Georgia House may do the same. But the media collectively “forgot” to address all the hurdles that it might face next. What are the odds that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signs this legislation? If he does sign it, how long would it take to go into effect? What will happen when this legislation is inevitably challenged in court? What will happen if Republicans attempt to fire Willis, and she challenges it in court? What are the odds that Willis will have already indicted Trump by that time, and that it’ll effectively be too late to matter?
In other words, if the Republicans’ goal is to indeed save Trump from prison by ousting Willis, their odds of succeeding in that goal seem kind of… murky. Actually, pretty remote. In fact, come to think of it, why are they waiting until now to try passing such legislation? If their goal was to actually oust Willis and save Trump, wouldn’t they have passed this legislation last year, before Willis could successfully get her special grand jury to etch Trump’s indictment recommendation in stone?
If anything, it feels like the Republicans intentionally waited to float this legislation until now because they’re aiming for maximum media impact, not legal impact. The dirty secret of Republican politics is that nine out of ten times they float something like this, it’s not with the intention of pulling it off. It’s with the intention of goading the ratings-hungry media into hyping their villainous stunt by misleading audiences into believing that it’s going to succeed, so audiences will be too scared to look away from their screens.
These days the entirety of the Republican Party brand is based on the premise that they’re omnipotent and can pull off anything they want. So they float stunt after threat after stunt like this, knowing most of it isn’t even realistically possible, but also knowing that a complicit media will always portray the Republicans as guaranteed to succeed with their stunt.
In other words, all signs – from the very late timing to the sheer remote odds that it would have worked even with enough time – suggest that this Republican stunt is for show. That doesn’t make them any less villainous for even floating such legislation. But the real problem is that because the Republicans know the entire mainstream media will always do their bidding by portraying these stunts as guaranteed to succeed, the Republicans just keep floating stunt after stunt like this.
Ask yourself why the media has collectively declined to even address any of the obvious difficulties in trying to use this legislation to save Trump. If Georgia Republicans actually had a clear path for pulling this off, wouldn’t the media be seizing on the opportunity to make their story even stronger by spelling out that clear path? Instead the media is just glossing over the part where this isn’t likely to succeed, and doesn’t even seem timed to try to succeed.
The most insidious part is that the media will always try to make the earnest claim that it’s “sounding the alarm” about these stories simply because of their authoritarian theme. But if the media believes that these kinds of stunts are worthy of panicked “chilling” coverage even if it’s not going to succeed, and not even designed to succeed, then why is the media never willing to disclose that any given stunt doesn’t have a path to succeed?
Several months back, MSNBC reported on a Merrick Garland memo and implied in the strongest terms possible that it meant the DOJ had decided to let Trump off the hook. It set off an apocalyptic wave of doomsday hysteria among viewers that night – and then the whole thing ended up having nothing to do with Trump. Garland then appointed a Special Counsel, the DOJ is clearly prosecuting Trump, and all that “sky is falling” hysteria from that night only ended up being good for MSNBC’s ratings and nothing else.
Last night it was the same story. MSNBC reported on the Georgia legislation and implied in the strongest terms possible that it meant Trump was off the hook in Fulton County, setting off yet another apocalyptic wave of doomsday hysteria among viewers. Yet this latest story also seems unlikely to have any impact on the prosecution of Trump.
The media will argue that because it didn’t say in exact words that this legislation means Trump is off the hook, it’s viewers’ fault if that’s the impression they came away with. But that’s a cop-out. The vast majority of people who watched this story on MSNBC tonight are now under the false impression that Trump has a 99% or 100% chance of being off the hook in Georgia. You can’t tell me that when a seasoned television news professional crafts a script before going on air, they’re not aware of its effect.
When you cover a scary scenario that’s unlikely to happen but you present it in a way that leads the audience to believe it’s definitely going to happen, you’re not being straight with the audience – you’re just chasing ratings.
I warned you awhile back that once it became obvious to audiences that Donald Trump was about to be criminally indicted, the (entire) mainstream media and pundit class would begin doing everything it could to convince you that it didn’t matter because Trump would just magically shake off the indictment anyway. All too predictably, here we are, with out of context narratives about how Trump is already somehow magically off the hook. Just once, when I make a cynical prediction about the media’s behavior, I’d like the media to prove me wrong. Unfortunately, when it comes to trying to dishonestly convince you that Trump’s indictments somehow don’t matter, I’m already being proven far too right.
