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Third Indictment's a charmed circle: Previous Guy could claim it's all Greek to us if it's not on TV [1]

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Date: 2023-08-02

Plato’s retreat: with the latest indictment, Trump’s followers may not have sipped enough Kool-Aid. Imagine Socrates shotgunning a can of Dolt 45.

Tom Nichols is one of the first to get an indictment commentary out, but given the televisual illiteracy of Trump supporters, it may take a global village watching a televised trial to be convinced that Mango Mussolini lied while committing a crime spree. Unfortunately the village idiots will only be watching RWNJ television, because as David Corn notes “zero percent—yes, zero percent—of MAGA Republicans think that Trump has committed serious federal crimes.”

Donald Trump stands indicted for attempting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and subvert the rights of American citizens. This is the moment that will decide our future as a democracy. This Is the Case Over the past year, state and federal prosecutors have alleged that Donald Trump went on something like a crime spree as a presidential candidate, as the sitting president, and then as a private citizen after his defeat. The charges, from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago, include business fraud, the illegal retention of classified material, and the destruction of evidence. www.theatlantic.com/...

Even Alan Dershowitz, a guy who wanted the age of statutory rape changed not simply because of Jeffrey Epstein, wants Trump’s trial televised, because the truth will get massaged while fully clothed. Unfortunately the Senate trials had a GOP majority rather than a gong.

The American public has the right to view legal proceedings regarding former President Donald Trump, including pretrial, trial and post-trial courtroom appearances. At the moment, federal trials are not televised, although many state trials are. The two impeachment trials of President Trump were televised. Transparency and accountability require that both of the Trump trials now pending — the one in Manhattan and the one in Miami — should be televised. Both sides should agree and should petition the judge. If the judge refuses, Congress should enact immediate legislation opening this federal trial to television cameras. I don’t know whether either side favors or opposes televising the trial, but I am certain the public supports maximum transparency. I have long believed that all trials, except perhaps those involving minors and other select exceptions, should be televised. Citizens have a right to see all three branches of their government in action. Today Congress is on television. So is the president’s State of the Union and other important addresses and events. There is no good reason for making an exception for the judiciary. This is especially true now, when there is so much public distrust of the courts. If the Trump trial is not televised, the public will learn about the events through the extremely biased reporting of today’s media. It will be as if there were two trials: one observed by reporters for MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times and other liberal media, the other through the prism of reporters for Fox, Newsmax and other conservative outlets. There will be nowhere to go to learn the objective reality of what occurred at trial. thehill.com/... x If President Trump is looking to turn the impeachment trial into a reality TV show, he chose the right team with Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, and Robert Ray. But this is the U.S. Senate, not the People's Court.



The pressure is on Senate Republicans to ensure this trial is fair. pic.twitter.com/5xt0yVQAvd — Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) January 17, 2020

x I agree, but as a reality show. Who will flip? Who will fry? Find out this week on…. pic.twitter.com/A5LFGN9b1k — SnarkTank (@TheSnarkTank99) August 1, 2023

Trump will turn this indictment, as he has done so with his previous indictments, into yet more proof that he is the target of a corrupt and nefarious cabal aiming to destroy the country. The Deep State, Democrats, the media, antifa, communists, Black radicals, and pedophiles—they are, in his BS narrative, arrayed against him and against real Americans. In Trump’s telling, the only way to thwart these evildoers was to declare the election rigged and foment the paranoia and outrage that led to the seditious January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Trump had no evidence of this diabolical election-stealing plot; he had no rational argument. His claims were debunked again and again. (His own consigliere, Rudy Giuliani, has admitted to making false allegations of election theft.) Nevertheless, millions of Americans accepted this false reality—and still do. They have been under a Trump trance, transfixed by his lies and false statements and impervious to actual facts. This latest indictment will confirm their irrational beliefs. A recent poll found that zero percent—yes, zero percent—of MAGA Republicans think that Trump has committed serious federal crimes. Only 2 percent of his loyalists concede that he did “something wrong” regarding the handling of classified documents. More than 9 out of 10 of these people said Republicans must stand behind Trump in the face of the investigations. And three quarters of all likely Republicans voters said Trump, following the 2020 elections, was legitimately contesting the results. (That number went up to 83 percent for Republicans who are heavy viewers of Fox News.) www.motherjones.com/...

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/2/2184758/-Third-Indictment-s-a-charmed-circle-Previous-Guy-could-claim-it-s-all-Greek-to-us-if-it-s-not-on-TV

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