Donald Trump’s criminal trials are now getting underway. Not that you’d know it.
On Monday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed for a limited gag order against Donald Trump. Why is this happening? It’s a standard procedure move when you’re about to go into trial against a defendant who can’t shut up. It’s a reminder that, yes, Trump’s first criminal trial really is about to start. In fact it’s set for March 25th, less than four weeks from now. The trial isn’t dependent on the Supreme Court’s pending “presidential immunity” ruling. The appeals courts have already shot down Trump’s last ditch attempt at a delay. The trial is happening, and it’s happening soon.
That’s not the only Trump trial that’s about to get underway. If the Supreme Court sticks with its years-long pattern of refusing to stick its neck out for Trump, and declines to take up his “presidential immunity” appeal, then his federal criminal trial in Washington DC will get underway as soon as his New York criminal trial is over. I told you awhile back that at least some of Trump’s criminal trials would happen well before the election, and now it’s obvious that they will.
I also told you awhile back that the closer we got to Trump’s criminal trials, and the more obvious it became that they were indeed going to happen before the election, the more loudly and hyperbolically the media would try to convince you of the opposite. That’s now happening as well. I always feel like a cynic when I predict that the political media will go out of its way to mislead you on these things in order to scare and outrage you into staying tuned in and boost its ratings. But then it always ends up happening.
For instance CNN published an article yesterday titled “Trump’s plan to use Judge Cannon to block Judge Chutkan and avoid trial.” Given that this is a laugh out loud unrealistic idea, almost childlike in its simplistic nature, I was hoping that the article would at least point out that this isn’t a real thing. But alas, no. The first several paragraphs try to make it sound like Trump really is going to be able to use Cannon to keep a hapless Chutkan from ever getting her case to trial. I ended up reading twenty paragraphs into the article, waiting for the part where they finally admit that Trump’s “strategy” is not a real thing, but no. The entire article was one big press release for Trump’s supposed strategy.
These kinds of (intentionally) misleading stories nearly always rely on what I’ve come to call the “Hapless Rube Fallacy.” They start off with the premise that Trump, his allies, or other associated villains are going to make some laughably simplistic move that’s actually secret genius. Then our side’s leaders are going to respond to this move like hapless rubes by saying to themselves “Oh no, we’ve been defeated by this laughably simplistic move, I guess we’ll just give up now.”
As absurd as this narrative structure sounds, we see the political media and pundit class use it all the time. For instance CNN is now telling us that if Judge Cannon simply moves her trial date back by two months, this will somehow magically prevent Judge Chutkan from being able to hold her trial at all. Uh, really? Chutkan would just give up at this point, instead of moving her trial accordingly? Does anything about Chutkan thus far suggest that she’s some hapless rube? More to the point, have we seen anything to suggest that Cannon is savvier than Chutkan, and is somehow going to outwit her? Of course not. So why are we even entertaining such a laugh out loud notion?
Because it’s good for ratings. That CNN article, laughable as it may be, is going viral. People keep sending it to me and asking if it means we’re doomed. But that’s the entire point. CNN, or any other major media outlet, publishes that kind of doomsday hysteria article specifically so that it’ll go viral as everyone panics over it, which will allow the media outlet to get its page views for the day. Page views directly translate into advertising revenue. Profit. Money. These kinds of misleading doomsday hysteria articles literally pay the bills of the people who write them. It’s all about clicks.
Yes, we all know that CNN is trash these days. But that’s not the point. It’s the entire political media industry that’s the problem. They’ll do anything to hit their ratings marks. All of them. Once Trump’s trials are underway, the ratings will be automatic. But that’s nearly four weeks from now. What are they supposed to do for ratings in the meantime? They can’t keep you tuned in for four weeks by talking about how Trump’s trials are going to begin in four weeks. So instead they’re going to spend these four weeks trying to convince you that these trials will just never happen. That’ll scare you into staying tuned in. Then, once Trump’s first criminal trial begins, the media will cover for all its misdirection by suggesting that it’s a shocking twist that Trump’s trials are actually happening. No one could have seen this coming, they’ll tell you. They pull this every time.
I track this with something I call the “Doomsday Index.” I look at how many panicked emails I get each day from people who are asking if Trump is going to be able to use this or that magic wand idea to get himself off the hook and if it means we’re all doomed. The nature of those emails tells me which bullshit narratives the media is using to try to get ratings that day, and the numbers of those emails tells me how loudly the media is shouting those bullshit narratives that day.
Please don’t send me these kinds of panicked doomsday hysteria emails, by the way. I never know what to do with them. But the point is that the more of these emails I’m receiving at any given time, the more it means the major media outlets are trying to walk you all out on a ledge of panic and fear.
Over the past few days the Doomsday Index has been off the charts about how Trump’s criminal trials will somehow never happen. I’ve even gotten a few angry emails from people who are insisting that I should admit Trump’s criminal trials are never going to happen. I really don’t know what to say to this kind of thing, because if you turn off CNN and MSNBC and Twitter for a minute and look out your window, you’ll see that Trump’s criminal trials are getting underway. His first criminal trial starts next month. Even Trump knows he can’t stop or delay his first trial, and he’s moved on to making nonsense filings aimed at limiting what the witnesses will be allowed to say at trial. It’s at that stage now.
We’re just twenty-seven days away from the start of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial. This is still the beginning of the year. The election is at the end of the year. Multiple Trump criminal trials were always going to happen well before the election. And you can clearly see that now. But instead of acknowledging as much, the media is now going to milk the “Trump’s trials will never happen” narrative even harder during these final weeks. Then once the trials start, they’ll expect you to be too relieved to notice that they were misleading you the whole time for ratings.
I’ll leave you with two thoughts. First, the problem is never just one political news outlet. The entire industry is structured such that CNN and MSNBC spend all day hyping certain narratives – no matter how false or misleading – that they think will keep the most eyeballs tuned in that day. Then the vast majority of political pundits on social media will merely parrot whatever they’re hearing on CNN or MSNBC that day, in the hope of getting booked on CNN or MSNBC the next day. The entire industry ends up near-unanimously hyping the same false narrative on any given day. And you hear that ridiculous take from so many different voices that day, you’re inclined to assume it has to be true. Yet when you look at the track record of accuracy for the political media’s “narrative of the day,” it’s very very low. The political media and pundit industry does not exist to inform you. It exists to keep you in suspense.
Second, my job is not to directly compete with the rest of the industry. I can’t do that. 95% of the voices in the industry spend each day chanting the same false or misleading narrative, in unison, all day every day. I can’t actively shout them all down.
All I can do is tell you what’s happening on a given storyline, and what it means, and what I think is going to happen next, and back it up with as much information and evidence and logic as possible. I can’t spend all day getting into a shouting match with the rest of the political media industry. That would be pointless, and I can’t be nearly as loud as they can. But I can help empower you to know how to scrutinize everything you hear from the mainstream political media, and how to tune out the misdirection and empty noise. The more savvy you become, the less vulnerable you become. That’s true in every walk of life.
