With the defense and the prosecution having rested their cases, closing arguments in Donald Trump's criminal hush money/falsified business records trial are scheduled for this Tuesday, May 28 after Memorial Day Weekend. Those arguments will be followed by jury deliberations, and it remains to be seen whether a Manhattan jury will vote "guilty" or "not guilty" — or if there will be a hung jury.
Meanwhile, the three other criminal indictments Trump is facing appear unlikely to go to trial before the November election.
Right-wing media outlets — from Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax TV and One America News to Breitbart News and Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast — have been portraying the trial as a political persecution, ignoring or downplaying the testimony that legal analysts on MSNBC and CNN have been describing in elaborate detail.
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St. Louis-based journalist Eric Berger, in an article published by The Guardian on May 27, warns that right-wing media's trial coverage could benefit Trump politically.
According to Berger, "Trump has retained much of his political support amid his ongoing hush-money trial in part due to a combination of the courtroom's ban on cameras and conservative media echoing his claims that both the prosecutor and judge are corrupt, media analysts say. The experts suggest that the former president could retain political support on the right even if the jury determines he is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his reimbursements to Michael Cohen for a payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign."
Media Matters' Matt Gertz told The Guardian that right-wing media outlets are painting the hush money trial as a "witch-hunt ginned up by Joe Biden" — saying that Trump "will be found not guilty" but also "arguing that if he is found guilty, it will be because the jury and the judge are partisan and corrupt." Gertz describes this approach as "heads, we win/tails, you lose."
Gertz told The Guardian, "They know that every alleged infraction or crime committed by Trump is an opportunity for them to prove that they are onboard with the MAGA movement and with Trump specifically by loudly saying that he did nothing wrong and that his pursuers are in fact the real criminals."
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Howard Polskin, president of the newsletter/website The Righting, believes that the lack of cameras in Justice Juan Merchan's courtroom benefits Trump.
Polskin told The Guardian, "It's Christmas in May for Trump. It was a gift for Trump that there were no cameras in the courtroom. I think there would have been a lot more coverage on both left, right and mainstream if that were the case."
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Read The Guardian's full report at this link.
