Sex acts to online rants, how media coverage of Trump's criminal trial misses the point
The big story on cable TV news and everywhere else Tuesday was the testimony adult film star Stormy Daniels gave in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial.
“A rather not-safe-for-work day in court,” as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it.
Daniels went into great detail about the alleged affair at the heart of the case, including a tale of spanking Trump and … hang on a second.
We need to put this into perspective. Trump and his minions, in their relentless attacks on the truth and the legitimate media’s attempt to report it, have for far too long succeeded at normalizing the abnormal, and too often journalists have gone along with it. This is a guy who has attacked and denigrated the country’s norms and institutions, all while demanding the protections they offer.
But please.
THIS IS A PORN STAR TESTIFYING ABOUT AN ALLEGED AFFAIR WITH A FORMER PRESIDENT IN A CRIMINAL TRIAL. The first criminal trial a former president has ever faced. A former president who is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2024. And it’s only one of four criminal trials Trump is facing.
This is not normal
This is not normal. This is not normal at all. It’s weird. It’s downright bizarre, like something out of an alternate universe. And journalists need to start acting like it is.
Just as importantly, so do their audiences.
Vaughn Hillyard, an Arizona State University graduate and excellent NBC and MSNBC reporter, got things right Tuesday morning. He was asked a general question about what was going on at the trial, but he took a beat before answering the question.
“Let’s take a step back for a moment here,” Hillyard said. “Six months out from the 2024 presidential election you have the presumptive Republican nominee inside of a courtroom listening to the testimony of an adult film star in which she is alleging that Donald Trump … engaged in an extra-marital affair just four months after his son, Barron, was born. This is hitting at the heart of the creditably of not Stormy Daniels, but of the defendant, Donald Trump.”
There you go. That’s how it’s done.
Vaughn Hillyard: left Arizona for NBC News. Then, 2020 helped him rediscover his home state
'Trump hates deleting posts — he sees it as a sign of weakness'
The day began with Trump, already fined by Judge Juan Merchan 10 times for contempt of court for his public and social-media outbursts, taking to his Truth Social platform to complain that the defense hadn’t had time to prepare for Daniels and that the judge is “CROOKED & HIGHLY CONFLICTED.”
Trump has been found in contempt of court 10 times. How does that even happen? Has there ever been anyone since, I don’t know, a Roman emperor or somebody, who so blatantly demonstrates that they don't believe the rules apply to them?
Whatever the case, apparently not wishing to make it 11 times, Trump quickly deleted the Tuesday morning post.
“The fact that Trump deleted the post suggests there were some heated conversations behind the scenes with his lawyers,” Jonathan Storm of the New York Times wrote in a running blog. “Trump hates deleting posts — he sees it as a sign of weakness — and has often resisted taking down even the most incendiary posts.”
See? Weird.
This isn't business as usual. And we can't start thinking it is
And how weird did it get? Again, it was weird before it even started. Jonah Bromwich, also writing in the New York Times blog, posted that, “Susan Hoffinger, a prosecutor, clarifies that Stormy Daniels will not describe ‘genitalia.’ This was — amazingly, given the defendant is a former president — an open question.”
No kidding.
The day in court was reportedly intense, with Daniels going into graphic detail — more than Merchan wanted to hear. Or, as Tapper put it, “TMI.” Again, “TMI” isn’t something typically associated with coverage of a former president, but this is anything but typical.
CNN and MSNBC reported on the day’s events, while Fox News, nothing if not reliable, framed it as positively as possible for Trump, given the circumstances. Jonathan Turley, always eager to defend the former president, complained about the judge allowing Daniels such a broad scope in her testimony, which inevitably led to all the sordid details.
“They lit a dumpster fire in this courtroom,” he said. Just like clockwork.
If you’re not yet convinced at the weird nature of what’s going on in the country, there’s this: After testimony wrapped up for the day, the networks settled into analysis and whatnot. Until news broke that the judge in the case in which Trump is accused of several felonies related to the possession of classified documents, had delayed that trial indefinitely.
Just another day at the office.
And that’s the problem.
Journalists need to consistently treat this as the circus that it is. We can’t grow immune to it. You can get used to anything. That doesn’t mean you should.
Reach Goodykoontz at [email protected]. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.
Subscribe to azcentral.com today. What are you waiting for?
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump criminal trials are stranger than fiction. News misses the point