No, this isn’t a “win” for Donald Trump
These days it seems the entire media, on both sides, spins everything that happens as a win for Donald Trump, a loss for Joe Biden, or both. That’s remarkable given that Biden is in a strong position for reelection, while Trump is facing one trial after another and is headed for prison. But this kind of “everything is a contrarian hot take” approach by the media is good for ratings, so we’ve come to expect it.
When Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to swiftly rule on Donald Trump’s claim that he has “presidential immunity,” it was a clear advantage for Smith. This Supreme Court has consistently shown an unwillingness to stick its neck out for Trump post-2020. So either the Supreme Court will side with Smith, or it’ll decline to hear the case and give authority to the U.S. Court of Appeals which will side with Smith.
But because the Supreme Court agreed to swiftly hear Jack Smith’s filing, Judge Chutkan announced today that she’s putting the case on hold. This doesn’t mean anything is being delayed. Not at all. It just means that Chutkan isn’t going to make any more moves in the case until the Supreme Court weighs in. Given that the Supreme Court aspect of the case should be resolved within weeks, and the trial is set to start three months from now, there’s no reason at all to expect that this “hold” will in any way delay the start of the trial.
This is all common sense stuff, right? Yet when the news of the hold came down this evening, MSNBC host Ari Melber announced that it was a “win” for Trump. How is this supposed to be a win for Trump? That part doesn’t matter. All along the media has been steering audiences toward the notion that Trump can and will just magically delay his trials until after the election. This narrative has been repeated so many times that audiences are conditioned to believe it. And so the media can now simply play into that narrative by falsely suggesting that this procedural hold somehow means the trial will be delayed.
The political media always does its biggest fear mongering about things that audiences don’t know coming in. The average political news viewer might not know that when a trial judge places a case on “hold” while an appeal is being expedited, it isn’t an actual delay. Nor do audiences necessarily know coming in that the reason a trial date is initially set for several months down the road is so that all these kinds of pretrial appeals can play out without delaying the trial date.
The media takes advantage of this by presenting standard procedural moves as if they’re bad news, or as if they’re going to delay the start of the trial, when neither of those things are true. It’s how they keep you tuned in. After all, you’re more likely to stay glued to your screen if you’re led to believe that this procedural hold means Trump is going be able to magically delay his trial to his liking, than if you’re accurately told that the hold is a non-story. It’s why it’s so important to educate yourself on how things actually work. It makes you immune to these kinds of ratings-driven media tactics.
