Donald Trump is closer to conviction than ever
Before Michael Cohen even took the stand, prior witnesses had already collectively sealed Donald Trump’s guilt. But you can’t keep the audience tuned in if the outcome is no longer in any real doubt. So the media decided to portray Cohen as a cartoonishly uncontrollable witness who was likely to blow the prosecution’s case. Then when that didn’t happen, the media pretended to be shocked that it didn’t happen.
But by Thursday, it was plainly obvious that Trump’s defense was out of opportunities to turn things around. So the media collectively decided that Cohen bombed on the stand on Thursday. CNN had people on the air claiming that the case is now doomed. MSNBC went with a chyron which said that the prosecution’s case now “wobbles.”
And what’s all this based on? Well, nothing. Trump’s defense attorney got tired of not being able to get Cohen to crack, so at one point the attorney simply declared that he’d just caught Cohen in a lie. That’s like getting tackled at the twenty yard line, and then doing a touchdown celebration in the hope of fooling the refs. It’s not going to work. The refs, or in this case the jurors, are merely going to roll their eyes.
But Trump’s attorney did accomplish one thing. By falsely declaring victory on Thursday, he handed the media the opportunity to run with that false narrative. And because the media never met a ratings-friendly false narrative that it didn’t want to run with, the media is now indeed claiming that Trump’s attorney scored points against Cohen that he didn’t actually score.
It’s yet another embarrassing day for the political journalism industry. But the good news is that the jurors aren’t sitting home watching CNN or MSNBC each night. They’ve been ordered not to do so, and for good reason. They’re only allowed to focus on what they hear and see in the courtroom, not the disingenuous spin that talking heads on TV might be using to try to boost ratings.
In reality Michael Cohen did exactly what Stormy Daniels did before that, and Hope Hicks and David Pecker before that. They each piled on in their own way, helping to further establish Trump’s guilt, and helping to corroborate each other’s stories, with a ton of supporting documentation along the way. Each of these witnesses including Cohen, has marched Trump that much closer to conviction.
