📺 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Trump whines about Fox News' trial coverage and demands Judge Jeanine take overhttps://t.co/uC8rdRRoUH

— Raw Story (@RawStory) May 14, 2024

“Eric Shawn of FoxNews has to spend a little time reading Gregg Jarrett concerning the 'no crime' Witch Hunt taking place in Downtown Manhattan," Trump posted last week. "Virtually every legal scholar and expert said that I did nothing wrong, the case should not have been brought. Election Interference!"

Trump doesn’t want you to pay attention to this:

"The visual aid of having that exhibit displayed on the screen in addition to when the audio tape was played of the famous 'I secretly recorded Donald Trump' thing accompanied by the transcript, it is so effective because jurors just sit and sit, as we do, and then they see something and they feel the engagement."

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"No sidebars for incredibly aggressive defense we have seen, no objections," Phang continued. "So what was the import of that? It was a free-flowing, well-paced, clean, succinct, direct examination today. Michael Cohen was afforded the opportunity to drive the narrative forward the way that the D.A.'s office wanted him to do, and the jury was taking notes intensely. There were at least three of them that were feverishly taking notes and looking." 

"So when they go to the jury room to deliberate, People's 35 is something they're going to tangibly have, and they will look at the handwriting," she added. "More importantly, they will see it matches with the central consultants, it matches with the 135, it matches the wire to Keith Davidson, it matches the gross-up — everything fits. And then today, they left to recess today and the last thing they heard was Donald Trump participating in the conspiracy."

That is, what’s actually going on in the courtroom. As Katie Phang also pointed out, Trump made few objections to Cohen’s testimony. Objections correct the record and preserve errors for appeal. The silence is interesting.

No wonder Trump came out yelling yesterday. 

(And please don’t tell me cameras would change this. Unless there were 3-4 cameras in the courtroom and a director nearby coordinating the shots no one would see Cohen and the visuals in the same screen, or see what the jury does: Cohen and the lawyers and Trump and the judge and the visuals. Cameras don’t put you in the room, they give you a peephole.  There is a vast difference between a TV/movie courtroom where every word and action is scripted and camera shots are carefully and tediously prepared, and reality. Even with cameras, we’d all be watching what reporters had chosen to report on, with reporters providing the context because we aren’t jurors, we aren’t there. It’s like seeing the Rockies on TV versus being there yourself. I’ve seen vistas in Colorado so beautiful they’re familiar from ads and movies. But being there is something else altogether. And we simply can’t all be in that courtroom.)