Donald Trump routinely defies expectations because his critics consistently underestimate him, according to a columnist who watched his attorneys cross examine Michael Cohen during his hush money trial.
Slate jurisprudence editor Jeremy Stahl was in court last week as defense attorney Todd Blanche grilled Cohen over his angry rants against the former president and inconsistencies in his stories about his own criminal culpability, and he said the media seemed unprepared for Trump's attorney to score a victory in his cross examination.
"This was the first and only moment that a member of the defense team had really dented the credibility of any of the witnesses pertaining to the details of the hush money deal itself," Stahl wrote. "Some very smart news reporters I had spoken with afterward, however, hadn’t thought all that much of the moment. One told me he didn’t even realize what had happened until afterward. Another downplayed how it might play with jurors, given all the other evidence. As legal analyst, Slate contributor, and former Obama ambassador and Trump investigator Norm Eisen put it to me, 'It was not a Perry Mason moment.'"
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Blanche confronted Cohen over phone calls he testified to having. with Trump before the 2016 election, and he caught the former attorney in an inconsistency involving a 96-second call with former Trump body man Keith Schiller that he claims was when the ex-president agreed to the hush money deal with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, and Stahl said that questioning could prove consequential to the jury.
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"To me, it was an incredibly effective and theatrical bit of questioning," Stahl wrote. "If Cohen was lying about this phone call, the defense will note in closing arguments, what other phone calls with Trump that were supposedly about the hush money payments might he be lying about? It’s the first point they had that I thought could actually potentially sway the jury."
But legal analysts and reporters covering the trial downplayed that moment in the coverage, Stahl wrote, and he was reminded of their certainty that Trump could not win the 2016 election.
"Are we all just miscalculating Donald Trump’s strength one more time in a way that would only redound to his benefit?" Stahl wrote.
"Waiting to get into court that morning, one national reporter had said to me that they were astonished by the degree to which members of the press corps continued to underestimate Trump," he added. "After Cohen’s testimony, another national reporter — one of the longest-tenured veteran journalists at the trial — and I were discussing how other members of the media did not seem nearly as impressed with Blanche’s 'aha' moment. The veteran reporter offered an explanation: 'confirmation bias.' That is, we all keep thinking Trump will fail, because we just don’t like the guy."