AFTERMATHS: Margaret Brennan pretended to ask!

FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 2024

Bharara pretended to answer: Should Donald J. Trump be frog-marched to prison, presumably after losing his expected appeal of last week's guilty verdicts?

This morning, the New York Times offers several letters on the subject. At long last, we'll admit it:

We can no longer find our feet within the tortured discussions which rule the day as our tortured pair of nations sink beneath the sea.

More on that below. For now, though pointlessly, let's look at what Preet Bharara and Lisa Rubin have recently said.

Bharara appeared on last Sunday's Face the Nation. At one point, he was asked if Trump had any grounds for appeal.

For the record, Bharara had said, at the start of the interview, that he is personal friends with the prosecutor and the judge in the matter under review. 

There's no reason why he shouldn't be. Concerning the question of legal appeals, here's the start of what he said:

BRENNAN (6/2/24): Well, sentencing is July 4, excuse me, July 11, four days before the convention, as we mentioned. What grounds for appeal do you think Mr. Trump has here?

BHARARA: So I think they'll make a number of key points. You know, Donald Trump does not want to leave anything on the cutting room floor. I think some of his arguments are non-frivolous. 

I agree with what Jan [Crawford] said, that in the ordinary course, it's very, very difficult to get a criminal conviction overturned, but it happens. 

"Some of [Trump's] arguments are non-frivolous?"  What might he have meant by that?

As he continued, Bharara cited a pair of possible grounds for appeal, though he said those grounds weren't "strong." Quickly, though, he arrived as the longer ramble shown below. 

Instantly, viewers were sunk in a type of word salad concerning the legal theory under which Trump was convicted. As Bharara summarized "this sort of technical business [which] causes people's eyes to glaze over," viewers of this major Sunday show were thrown into some very tall grass. 

As Bharara spoke, we'll guess that some viewers' eyes did glaze over. But along the way, on two occasions, Bharara did manage to state a fairly obvious factual point:

BHARARA: And then there's this sort of technical business that I'm sure causes lay people's eyes to glaze over. And that is the degree to which the second crime, the thing that made and transformed the misdemeanor into a felony, the basis of that did not have to be decided unanimously by the jury. 

So the further crime, the felony, was appropriate, based on the jury's decision, if there was—the falsification of the business documents was done to further or to conceal or to commit some other crime, namely, an election crime in New York, and that could have been done three different ways.

BRENNAN: But—

BHARARA: But the jury instructions—and they don't have to be unanimous on those three different ways. And that's probably an issue for appeal.

Say what? We've tried to punctuate that word salad in a way which is fair. In fairness to Bharara, you really need a type of visual flowchart to illustrate the complex path by which a bunch of misdemeanors were transformed into felonies on the way to this defendant's downfall.

At any rate, Bharara made a fairly obvious factual statement at two separate points:

According to Bharara, "the jury didn't have to be unanimous" in one part of its decision making. Part of the jury's reasoning "did not have to be decided unanimously," Bharara also said.

 As with a thousand other people who have tried to explain the shape of this legal case, Bharara's overall presentation here was about as clear as mud. But on two separate occasions, he did make that fairly obvious factual statement—and he seemed to say that this might be a reasonable basis for a legal appeal.

Did Bharara think this might be the basis for a successful appeal? Brennan didn't exactly ask. Instead, viewers were subjected to the word flow we show you here:

BRENNAN (continuing directly): Let me zero in on that, because that has been something that—that Mr. Trump and his allies have talked about. 

In terms of this case, this was about trying to manipulate an election, and fraud related to that. His allies say this was just—it was a paperwork thing, somebody mislabeled this as a legal expense. 

How would you tell the lay person to understand this?

BHARARA: Look, the underlying misdemeanor, and that's why it's a misdemeanor, is falsifying business records. But the reason it becomes a felony—not the most serious felony on the books in New York but a felony, and any felony is serious—is if that crime, that misdemeanor crime was done to conceal or commit some other crime, and that other crime that the prosecutors alleged and got the convictions on was the—promoting someone's election by unlawful means—

BRENNAN: Yeah.

BHARARA: Either done by the falsification of other documents or committing some other tax crime or a further election fraud crime. 

And so the prosecution, I think, did it as well as anybody could do for lay people, because the jury obviously was a series of lay people. But this was a serious thing that undermined and interfered with the election in 2016. And that's serious and not to be taken lightly.

Once again, the salad was lustily tossed. (For the record, the jury was "a series of lay people" drawn from a district which voted for Biden over Trump in 2020 by a margin of 86 to 12!)

Alas! Within the realm of high-end American journalism, the verbal tsunami we have shown you represents a fairly typical attempt to explain the legal basis on which Donald J. Trump was charged with, and convicted of, 34 felony counts.

Sadly, we now tell you this:

Within the context of our nation's persistent non-discourse discourse, the verbal tsunami shown above represents an attempt to "zero in on" the (highly significant) matter under discussion. 

Overall, the presentation was highly unclear. Along the way, Bharara had said this:

At some point in their deliberations, the twelve jurors "didn't have to be unanimous" in their decision-making. Bharara stated that basic point two separate times—and he almost seemed to suggest that this might represent a solid basis for a legal appeal.

Or then again, maybe not! Brennan didn't specifically ask if that's what he thinks, and Bharara never specifically said.

At any rate, as Brennan "zeroed in on" Bharara's view, the tall grass only grew higher. Eventually, Bharara seemed to say that the defendant had engaged in "a serious thing that undermined and interfered with the election in 2016."

"That's serious and not to be taken lightly," Bharara also said. So did he think the serious matter in question might not provide grounds for a winning appeal? 

By now, no one watching this program would have had the slightest idea! Viewers had observed a jumble of words posing as a discussion.

Within our rapidly failing nation, this is the way our imitations of national discourse routinely tend to play out. Routinely, it will appear that a solid discussion has taken place, with participants "zeroing on" on some key point.

No such behavior will have occurred, but seeming will be believing.

No such clear discussion took place in this exchange. That said, Bharara did at least state a basic fact—except for Face the Nation viewers who also watch Morning Joe.

We pity the fool who had watched Morning Joe only three days before! As we noted in this report, such viewers had seen legal analyst Lisa Rubin assertively offer this claim to Morning Joe's Willie Geist:

GEIST (5/30/24): I want to get some clarification from you about the jury instructions. Donald Trump, some of his minions, going on cable networks, suggesting that the judge told the jury that they don't have to be unanimous.

That's not true. Can you explain what this little dispute may be about?

RUBIN: Yeah, that's not true at all!

According to the legal analysts, the statement in question, from Trump's minions, "wasn't true at all!" Three days later, there was Bharara, saying the things he said.

Rubin was back on Morning Joe this Monday, one day after Bharara's appearance. Please don't ask us to walk you through what she said at that time.

We live within a failing society which features "imitation of discourse." To all intents and purposes, there is never a way for concerned citizens to get clear on even the most basic facts about the most significant public events.

As our devolution continues, we continue to build a two-nation nation. We've built a system in which Red America's citizens hear one set of mandated claims and Storylines, while Blue America's citizens hear a vastly different set. 

It's propaganda all the way down, except when people like Brennan and Bharara join to create heaping piles of salad. (Just for the record, we're not suggesting that either person had some ill intent.)

Within this context, a letter writer says today that Trump should be sent to jail. His letter starts in the manner shown:

To the Editor:

Re “Should Trump Be Sentenced to Prison? Two Opposing Views” (Opinion guest essay, June 3):

The retired judge Nancy Gertner’s argument against imprisoning Donald Trump omits the simple reality that without prison time, Donald Trump faces no meaningful punishment.

Mr. Trump plainly does not see the fact of having been convicted, standing by itself, as a shameful judgment on himself. Rather, he wears the guilty verdict as a badge of martyrdom. Fines would obviously be meaningless, both because he is a multibillionaire and because his supporters would pay them. And Mr. Trump is not a credible candidate for probation.

Our question might be this:

Should Trump "see the fact of having been convicted [in this case] as a shameful judgment on himself?"

For ourselves, we assume that Trump is "mentally ill"—colloquially, that he's a "sociopath." (That isn't a technical clinical term.) At the heart of such diagnoses lies the idea that people so afflicted or so handicapped will never experiences feelings of remorse or shame. That lies at the heart if the problem!

Yesterday afternoon, George Conway described Trump as a sociopath on Deadline: White House. With very few exceptions, major journalists have agreed that this obvious possibility must never be mentioned in any discussion of Trump.

In that additional way, our journalists agree that our public discussions will be mere imitations of same. But for ourselves, we can't say that Trump's behavior in this matter under review was enormously shameful. We Blue now agree to call it shameful because we've also banded together, at this point, to make this ridiculous claim:

Voters need to know who a candidate had sex with, ten years before, on one occasion, before they can know how to vote!

We Blues have stooped to the point where we stand behind that "new rule"—that point of sheer inanity. Joining the garbage-can conduct now broadcast on Fox every night of the week, this is part of the moral and intellectual breakdown which now afflicts the Blue regions of this land.

We Americans now live inside seas of salad and prisons of Storylines. As we stumble about in the dark, we increasingly pursue the only goal left—the goal of imprisoning Others.

No one has the slightest idea of any basic facts. Logic is also shown the door. It's reached the point where it's mainly a matter of who you want to lock up.

We can't seem to beat Trump at the ballot box, so we dream of locking him up. This is the level to which we've descended over here within our failing Blue world.

In this morning's New York Times, David Brooks attempts to explain our decline. We'd put it in simpler terms.

We Blues have been building toward this defeat for at least the past sixty years. Disaster may arrive on June 27.

Can President Biden engage in a full-blown debate with Candidate Trump, a highly energetic man who can bullsh*t all night long? At this point, we find it hard to believe that he can, though it may turn out that we're wrong.

On Fox, viewers are persistently told that President Biden is in a steep decline. To this day, Blue America's voters are aggressively shielded from this potent concern.

In the midst of this tribal segregation, the nation swims along in a vast sea of salad. In our view, Donald J. Trump is vastly disordered, but no one really knows what he was convicted of, and no one ever will.

Also, let's lock up the Alitos! More on the epistemology of that Blue American meltdown will perhaps be offered tomorrow.

No one gets clear on basic facts. It's all tribal Storyline now. 

With respect to Face the Nation, it's a bit like the old joke from the Soviet Union. "We pretend to work," the Soviet citizen mordantly said, "and they pretend to pay us."

So it goes on TV shows like Face the Nation:

Major figures pretend to explain. Perhaps without understanding our plight, we viewers pretend to listen!