No, Donald Trump’s criminal trial didn’t just get pushed until after the election
All along I’ve said that we were looking at one of two scenarios regarding Donald Trump’s “presidential immunity” appeal. The first was that the Supreme Court would decline to take it up, which would allow the trial to begin very promptly. The second was that the Supreme Court would take up the appeal but rule against Trump, which would still allow his trial to begin fairly promptly. It turns out it’s the latter scenario – but now we’re being told the sky is falling.
The Supreme Court has set the hearing for April. This has prompted most legal pundits on TV and Twitter to declare that the trial now has little or no chance of taking place before the election. Silly me, I thought the election was in November. Oh wait, it is in November. So what’s all this hysteria based on?
If the Supreme Court hears the appeal in April and rules against in May, then the trial will be set to start after that. There’s a lot of talk about how Trump’s 88 day window to prepare for the trial won’t begin until after the Supreme Court rules. But that’s not necessary. That window can begin at any time. This can be set up such that the minute the Supreme Court shoots Trump down, his trial can begin.
But we all know that there are plenty of ratings to be had by going on TV and yelling that the sky is falling, so of course most legal pundits who are in love with the cameras are indeed insisting that this means Trump’s trial won’t happen before the election. And the Twitter pundits, who are hoping to go viral and get booked on TV, are naturally yelling the same thing. Remember, when everyone is in agreement about some doomsday thing happening, it’s not because they think it’s going to happen. It’s because they all think they can get the most ratings and retweets out of predicting that it’ll happen. And then they hope you won’t notice when these things never do happen.
These are, after all, the same people who told us that Trump would never be indicted to begin with. In fact, as it became more and more clear that Trump was about to be indicted these types became more loudly insistent than ever that he would never be indicted. These types are proven wrong every time, and it’s not because they’re dumb. It’s because they’re not trying to get it right. In fact when bad things do happen, these types never do accurately predict that, because they’re too busy hyping unrealistic threats in the name of chasing ratings.
But the media’s fictional doomsday narrative today about Trump’s trial being pushed past the election has nonetheless allowed the outrage addicts on our side to go wild. The names of all the far right Supreme Court Justices are now trending on Twitter, so people can (incorrectly) rage about how these Justices have decided to save Trump from going to trial. Merrick Garland is trending, as everyone blames him for the fact that the Supreme Court has let Trump off the hook, even though the Supreme Court has done no such thing. It’s just a good old fashioned rage fest today, based on a doomsday thing that didn’t even happen.
It’s also a good day to turn off MSNBC and Twitter, and go watch sports or something. You gain nothing by being exposed to misleading ratings-driven doomsday hysteria. It doesn’t make you vigilant. It just makes you disinformed. Better to ignore the doomsday hype for a few days until after the media has finished milking it for ratings, and then only tune back in once the legitimate legal experts (the ones who aren’t auditioning for the cameras) get a chance to tell us what we’re really looking at.
In any case, even as we await Donald Trump’s federal criminal trial, keep in mind that we’re now just three and a half weeks from the start of Trump’s New York criminal trial. That trial is not in any way dependent on this or any other Supreme Court appeal. That trial will start on March 25th, and Trump will be convicted on thirty-four felony counts. The New York trial is somehow being written out of existence by the folks on TV who are insisting none of Trump’s trials will take place before the election, even though it’s taking place in less than a month. The people on TV really want us to forget that the election isn’t until November, don’t they?
