Aileen Cannon still doesn’t have a magic wand
Judge Aileen Cannon has failed to set a date for a procedural thing in Donald Trump’s criminal trial, and this has set off all kinds of doomsday hysteria across social media today. Not only are folks convinced that Trump’s classified documents trial won’t happen until after the election, they’re also convinced that Cannon’s ruling means Trump’s other criminal trials will be forced to take place after the election. That is… not how things work.
For starters, Cannon doesn’t have the unilateral ability to do anything. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has the say in these matters, not Cannon. The fact that Jack Smith hasn’t yet taken this to the 11th Circuit means that he’s not particularly worried about it. If today’s developments prompt him to ask the 11th Circuit to step in, then we’ll see some changes.
But there’s this bizarre narrative on social media that Cannon’s failure to set a date on this procedural matter has cleverly made it so that the 11th Circuit can’t step in. And that’s just silly. Cannon has routinely shown that she barely even understands how the system works. But now she’s supposedly such a secret evil genius that she’s managed to foil the entire judicial system just by… not setting a date on something? Come on.
The hysteria is even sillier about how Cannon’s failure to set a procedural date is going to prevent Trump’s other criminal trials from happening. As if the judges in the other trials are simply going to say “Oh no, Cannon hasn’t set a procedural date, so we have to keep the entire calendar open for her forever, and our trials will just never happen.” You get how ridiculous this notion is, right? These other judges are far savvier than Cannon, and if she can’t get her own schedule straight, they’re just going to decide that their own trials take precedence.
Yet we’re continually told by the media and pundit class that that this one inexperienced and clueless lowest level judge somehow has the magical power to bring the entire Judicial Branch to its knees with a simple parlor trick. You’d think at some point we’d wise up to these kinds of laugh out loud narratives.
Remember when the media and pundit class told us that Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro had magically upended fifty years of RICO law and gotten Trump off the hook simply by requesting speedy trials in Fulton County? In reality they were setting up plea deals against Trump.
Remember when the media and pundit class told us that Georgia Republicans had passed legislation that would allow them to magically oust Fani Willis, and her case was doomed? In reality that legislation specifically did not give them the ability to oust Willis.
Remember in mid-2022 when the media and pundit class told us that Merrick Garland had issued a memo prohibiting the DOJ from prosecuting Trump until after 2024. In reality that memo was clearly referring to the DOJ prosecuting people who were running in the 2022 election.
How many more times can the media and pundit class sell us on the idea that some simple parlor trick has magically gotten Donald Trump off the legal hook, only for it to turn out to be a totally and laughably fictional story? At some point you realize these doomsday narratives are all just for effect.
Aileen Cannon doesn’t have the unilateral ability to delay Trump’s criminal trial past the election. And she sure as hell doesn’t have the ability to magically delay Trump’s other criminal trials. All you have to do is think these things through, instead of having the immediate emotional response that the media is trying to trigger in you. Cannon doesn’t have a magic wand. No one in the political or legal system ever has a magic wand. And no one ever will, no matter how many magic wand stories the media makes up in order to keep you tuned in.
