STARTING TOMORROW: Happy talk and comfort food!

MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 2023

Comfort food is Us: If Donald J. Trump goes on trial next spring, will he be convicted?

A second question is this:

If he isn't convicted in his first trial, how might that event play out as the November election draws near?

Concerning next November's election, we can only offer you this: You'll rarely hear this on blue tribe cable, but current polling, such as it is, has the race quite close.

According to FiveThirtyEight.com, the most recent Emerson College poll has Trump ahead by one point. The most recent Economist/YouGov poll had Biden up by one.

Late in July, the New York Times/Siena College poll had Biden and Trump deadlocked at 43 points apiece. Consternation swept the ranks, if only briefly, when that finding was published.

From the blue tribe perspective, these are puzzling, worrisome poll results. Perhaps for that reason, we rarely see these surveys mentioned when on our tribe's prime time "cable news" programs.

It's also true that it's much too early to be polling next November's election. That said, President Biden seems to be a highly vulnerable candidate—and even as his likely opponent piles up his current string of indictments, nobody seems to have a poll in which that likely opponent is going away.

Within that context, we restate our initial question. If Donald J. Trump goes on trial next spring, could he escape conviction?

It seems to us that he plainly could, especially if the trial in question involves his conduct with respect to the 2020 election. We think Trump could escape conviction.

This is why we say that:

We find it hard to believe that Trump could ever be acquitted in either one of those possible trials. (The same is true of a potential trial concerning his retention of top-secret government documents.)

We find it hard to believe that a unanimous jury will ever find Trump not guilty in one of those possible trials. But it only takes one holdout juror to eliminate conviction, and a hung jury would instantly be bruited, across the land, as the equivalent of an acquittal.

A hung jury wouldn't be the equivalent of an acquittal, of course. That would be especially true if ten or eleven jurors, out of twelve, had voted for conviction. 

Still, it's hard to estimate the possible effect of any such failure to convict. And, for reasons we'll explore this week, we know of no reason to assume that either of these possible trials would have to end in conviction.

Tens of millions of neighbors and friends—tens of millions of fellow citizens—will be eager to vote for Candidate Trump if he's nominated next year. For ourselves, we disagree with the judgment of those neighbors and friends concerning that possible vote for Trump—but then, they disagree with us!

In our view, the possible election of Trump is a matter of significant concern. But in the face of that possible election, we see a high-profile "journalistic" world which principally exists to serve tribe members large doses of blue tribe happy talk and blue tribe comfort food.

Have the guardians of our blue tribe perhaps abandoned theirs posts? Instead of offering good, sound advice, are they offering happy talk and comfort food instead?

We were especially struck by that possibility as we watched Lawrence O'Donnell last Thursday night. In our view, Lawrence offered a heaping platter of blue tribe comfort food all through his hour-long program.

We can't link you to a transcript of that evening's Last Word program. As you know, MSNBC has stopped publishing transcripts of its shows, we assume for the obvious reasons.

We can't link you to a transcript of the revelry and the gloating. That said, you can watch the entire hour thanks to this posting by the invaluable Internet Archive site.

We can't show you a transcript! But to our ear, Lawrence was still gloating, as he'd done all week, about the manifest greatness of the Fani Willis indictment in Georgia.

The schadenfreude was general over our tribe's cable news that night—for example, when Lawrence said this to defense attorney Amy Lee Copeland midway through the program:

O'DONNELL (8/17/23): Amy Copeland, one struggles to imagine what anyone could seriously say in Donald Trump's defense at [Trump's newly canceled] Monday event, which is why I read just that one page of the [Fani Willis] indictment, which contains thirteen lies told in the famous phone call to Brad Raffensberger, lies that usually get ignored by us in our coverage of the phone call because we're just stuck on the solicitation part of it, which is the "Get me the 11,000 votes." 

But if you are defending Donald Trump against this accusation of this being a criminal enterprise, you have to take on each one of those grotesque lies in those thirteen lies in that phone call.  I just don't see where the Trump defense begins on material like that.

Copeland replied with a snarky but pleasing quip. The other panelists shared a laugh. Meanwhile, though, Lawrence had made a type of admission:

Possibly blinded by his own tribal messaging, he had offered a stark admission. He can't even see where a defense of Trump might start with respect to those "thirteen lies." 

He can't see where Trump's defense might start! Thus spake our tribal thought leader.

Alas! Our tribunes have behaved this way dating all the way back to their endless claims about the way Robert Mueller was going to dismantle Trump. (Surely, Mueller already had the complete tax records, we were told again and again.)

Also, dating back to their clueless judgments in July 2015. At that time, they were sure, completely sure, that Candidate Trump's snarky comment about POW John McCain was going to end his campaign right there!

Alas! Our blue tribe tribunes have been remarkably clueless every step of the way as Trump has risen to political power and to cultural dominance. Last Thursday night, Lawrence was boasting about his cluelessness—about the fact that he can't even imagine how a defense night work.

Copeland replied with a bit of snark, and the whole panel chuckled. Moments later, Andrew Weissmann did a great deal better. 

But all in all, last Thursday's hour was a sponge bath of tribal comfort food as we and our tribunes convinced ourselves that this latest long national nightmare would turn out well for our side.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what Weissmann said to Lawrence that night and then we'll continue from there. All in all, we'll be suggesting this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our blue tribe's corporate tribunes have rarely been especially helpful over the past eight years.

Good grief! As Lawrence puzzled and Copeland quipped, Trump was running even with Biden—and given the way our electoral college tips at present, a tie goes to the Republican.

Could Donald J. Trump get elected next year? There's no way to know what's going to happen, but we'd have to say that he certainly could.

Also, concerning those upcoming trials, we'd like to remind you of this:

It isn't solely a question of how Trump's defense might seem to a bunch of people like us. How might a Trump defense seem to those one or two jurors—to the one or two jurors which could stop a conviction? How does all this happy talk sound to friends and neighbors like them? 

How might the Fani Willis indictment seem to fellow citizens like them? On blue tribe cable, the question is rarely asked. 

We just keep wolfing our comfort food. We'll consider this problem all week.

Tomorrow: For starters, what Weissmann said