The MRC vs. Justice: The Trump Trial, Part 1

The Media Research Center wants you to believe that Donald Trump is an innocent victim of liberal prosecutors and a biased media -- not that he was on trial for committing felonies over paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an alleged affair.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 8/7/2024

TV news coverage of the 2024 campaign has been dominated by the legal cases brought against the Republican frontrunner, former President Donald Trump. Yet even though these cases are taking place in the obviously partisan environment of a presidential election, an examination of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage finds the networks rarely identified even elected Democratic prosecutors as “Democrats.”

Key findings:

• 97.9% of stories FAILED to identify Special Counsel Jack Smith as selected by Democratic Attorney General Merrick Garland;
• 88.4% of stories FAILED to identify Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg as a Democrat;
• 93.3% of stories FAILED to identify Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis as a Democrat.
• ABC’s World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News NEVER labeled Bragg or Willis as Democrats.

Details:

Between January 1 and August 31, former President Trump received a total of 894 minutes of coverage on ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News. The vast majority of this time (772 minutes, or 86% of Trump’s total coverage) was consumed by the various legal cases against him. Topping the list: the Florida documents case (215 minutes), the federal case into Trump’s post-2020 election activities (190 minutes), the Manhattan “hush money” case (172 minutes) and the Georgia election case (106 minutes).

Yet even as these legal dramas dominate the political discourse, the networks have strained to present the prosecutors as non-partisan actors — even those who ran and won their offices as Democratic partisans.

In targeting Bragg, Noyes wrote:

The so-called “hush money” charges against Trump were brought in April by Manhattan’s D.A. Alvin Bragg, who ran and won office as a Democrat in 2021. During his campaign, Bragg frequently reminded voters how in an earlier case he had successfully sued the Trump Foundation, promising: “I know how to follow the facts and hold people in power accountable.”

[...]

Bragg also prosecuted the Trump Organization on tax charges. Since January 1, the evening newscasts aired seven stories about that case, one of which (on ABC) mentioned Bragg by name. None labeled the D.A. as a Democrat.

Noyes didn’t explain why it was a bad thing for a prosecutor to be proud of his record of holding people and organizations accountable for their criminal misdeeds, or why the Trump Foundation should be held above the law. Further, the right-wing Washington Examiner article Noyes quoted admitted that Bragg did not, in fact, prosecuting Trump: “No, Bragg did not specifically pledge, ‘If elected, I will indict Donald J. Trump.’ But he promised to pursue Trump and hold him ‘accountable,’ which is liberal code for going after Trump in any way possible.” Noyes didn't share the page from the "liberal codebook" where he divined that knowledge.

As Trump's New York trial drew closer, the MRC ramped up the Trump victimhood narrative again. Tim Graham pushed this narrative on his April 3 podcast:

Once again in 2024, journalists need to justify treating Trump as a deadly bubonic plague, an impending Hitler. Treating him as one side of an election is dangerous when he is the End of Democracy. Then they claim they only have a bias in favor of Truth. Yes, they’re totally not favoring the Democrats with this foam-flecked Evil Trump coverage.

On April 1, the New York Times podcast The Daily tackled the “Trump Problem,” which they defined as this: Why must we deal with business executives who want us to treat Trump and his voters like they are normal citizens and not a Death Star for Democracy? Host Michael Barbaro asked Times political reporter Jim Rutenberg about the impression Republicans have that the media are wearing a “jersey” for Team Biden in all of their hostility to Trump.

Rutenberg’s reply was simply awful: “No one wants to be wearing a jersey on our business. But maybe what they really have to accept is that we’re just sticking to the true facts, and that may look like we’re wearing a jersey, but we’re not. And that may, at times, look like it’s lining up more with the Democrats, but we’re not. If Trump is lying about a stolen election, that’s not siding against him. That’s siding for the truth, and that’s what we’re doing.”

This podcast airs on more than 300 “public” radio stations, which underlines how NPR is one big liberal sandbox. It wasn’t even the only NPR talk program making this preposterous argument.

Rather than provide actual evidence of a stolen election, Graham pushed his employer’s dubious conspiracy theory on the subject:

Both shows never touched on the Hunter Biden laptop or any other issue where the media suppressed and disparaged true stories. When they couldn’t suppress it, they lied about it, claiming it had “all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.” Then, in 2022, the New York Times and other leftist outlets admitted the laptop was a real thing. This apparently isn’t supposed to dent their “we’re not for Democrats, we’re for truth” spins.

Right before the election, NPR executive Terence Samuel infamously dismissed the Hunter scandal: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.” It was a “pure distraction.” It was, he said, a “politically driven event.” As if all of their wild caricatures and speculations about Trump aren’t “politically driven”? 

Once again, Graham ignored the fact that there was no reason to trust the Hunter laptop story at face value because it came from the New York Post, a Murdoch-owned right-wing rag, and the Post provided no independent corroborating evidence of the laptop’s veracity at the time of the story's publication.

Graham’s boss, meanwhile, ran crying to his buddy Mark Levin that the big bad media is just too mean to Trump:

On Sunday’s episode of Life, Liberty, & Levin on the Fox News Channel, Media Research Center founder and president L. Brent Bozell explained to Mark Levin how the media are relentlessly negative in their coverage of Donald Trump, and focus largely on his legal troubles and avoid covering how President Biden is failing on the issues from inflation to immigration to crime. 

Levin asked Bozell: “What do you make of the media’s coverage of Biden’s war on Donald Trump?”

Bozell began with Trump’s presidency: “Over a four year period we looked at that media’s coverage of Donald Trump when he was president. And found that on average every month it was 90% negative coverage they gave. No matter what his successes and his successes, you cannot argue his successes. But they just didn’t cover them.”

[...]

Levin then noted the media want to compare Trump to Hitler, just as they did to Barry Goldwater, to Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. They engage in character assassination. Bozell agreed, and added the “end of democracy” spin.

Needless to say, Bozell and Levin are pretending that Fox News isn’t part of “the media” — if they were honest, they would have to admit that the channel that airs Levin’s show largely avoids reporting negative news about Trump, or explain why Trump’s legal troubles aren’t actually news.

As Trump’s trial drew nearer, an April 15 “study” by Noyes served up a different angle on victimhood by pretending it was all a partisan sideshow:

Barring a last-minute hiccup, today a Democratic prosecutor — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — will begin his unprecedented criminal trial of former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s certain presidential nominee in November’s general election.

Despite the obvious political implications of such a prosecution, a new study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening news coverage shows at least 90% of their coverage failed to inform viewers that Bragg and the other elected Democrats going after Trump are “Democrats.” It’s as if the networks prefer to disingenuously portray the indictments and civil lawsuits as the work of nonpartisan career prosecutors, rather than as partisan attempts to use the court system to hobble the electoral prospects of the country’s top Republican.

For this study, our analysts reviewed all broadcast evening news coverage from January 1, 2023 through April 10, 2024. Here’s a rundown of how the networks are failing to adequately disclose the partisanship of the three elected Democrats prosecuting Trump: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg; Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis; and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Again, needless to say, Noyes’ definition of “TV news” conveniently doesn’t include Fox News, since that would mean Noyes would have to admit Fox News has shown bias in covering the prosecutors, and it’s a key MRC narrative to never admit that Fox News has any sort of bias. Noyes served up more ranting:

From the beginning of these cases, journalists have had a choice in how they frame these various legal challenges to Donald Trump: Democrats vs. a Republican (i.e., a partisan food fight), or nonpartisan law enforcement vs. an accused lawbreaker. Clearly, the editorial choices made by these broadcast networks shows they are framing these cases as the actions of nonpartisan law enforcement officials — all of whom just happen to be Democrats.

But if it were a leading Democrat who had been placed under the legal microscope by a trio of elected Republicans, does anyone think that the media would be so reluctant to even mention the partisanship of the prosecutors?

Of course not.

The victimhood crusade continued with an April 15 post by P.J. Gladnick raging at a writer who pointed out that “Trump has consistently been given more freedom and more privileges than virtually any other defendant in his shoes.” In response, Gladnick offered only the rote right-wing attacks against prosecutors Letitia James and Fani Willis and personally attacking the writer as having “hatred of Trump” while calling his column a “fraud.”

Curtis Houck fretted about Trump “suffering” during his trial in an April 16 post:

Amid the voluminous coverage on the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC this week on the start of the hush money trial brought by far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against former President Trump, Tuesday’s CBS Mornings whined not enough Americans care about this trial....like ABC’s Good Morning America, who was tickled pink about Trump suffering.

CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman had just finished explaining why this Trump trial is “significant because it’s first” and “is a solemn day in court when you put a former President...on trial” when co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King kvetched about the American public not being consumed by this.

[...]

Over on ABC, co-host and former Clinton flack Stephanopoulos giddily told chief Washington correspondent and three-time bestselling anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl that after having spent a year “talking about the political and legal calendars clashing”, Monday finally arrived.

Stephanopoulos added Monday “felt” like a change in “the dynamic...from” the past “when Donald Trump was so convinced” the charges would be boon for his campaign.

Karl beamed in announcing he saw “it in his behavior, in his demeanor” with Monday having been “a wake-up call for Donald Trump” in the form of “his new reality” as “now criminal defendant Trump”.

Houck offered no evidence he can actually read Karl’s mind the way he is purporting to do here.

In a post the next day, Houck melted down over President Biden getting to do presidential things while Trump was stuck in a courtroom:

ABC’s Good Morning America and its chief White House correspondent/chief Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce were emanating warm fuzzies and weak knees on Wednesday over their allies in the New York legal system interfering in the 2024 presidential election, preventing former President Trump from campaigning five days a week and allowing their candidate — President Joe Biden — to have the country to himself.

Co-host Michael Strahan had a tease giving Team Biden what they want by boasting of Trump on day two of jury selection “test[ing] the patience of the judge while President Biden hits the campaign trails in a battleground state.”

Former Clinton official and fellow co-host George Stephanopulos later tossed to Bruce with more state-run phrasing: “While Donald Trump is tied up in court, President Biden has been on the campaign trail in battleground state of Pennsylvania.”

Even the chyron flashed their glee with the situation: “President Biden Hits the Campaign Trail; Slams Trump’s Values & “Failed” Economic Policies in Pennsylvania”.

Bruce’s 51-second report was nauseatingly hacktastic and a fine audition to replace the ever-inept Karine Jean-Pierre as press secretary in a hypothetical second Biden term, starting with her gleeful proclamation about “Biden...trying to seize this moment and create a real splitscreen, leaning into his roots in Scranton, arguing he and Donald Trump have very different values.”

Um, isn’t Houck the nauseatingly hacktastic one by being paid to defend his beloved inciter of riots and lash out at anyone who doesn’t pathologically hate Biden the way he does?

Nicholas Fondacaro raged in an April 17 post that people who aren’t white males are prosecuting Trump:

Elements of the liberal media don’t see the lawsuits and trials against former President Trump as just tools to score wins for their electoral politics, they also see them as tools to score wins for their racial politics as well. MSNBC host Joy Reid made that abundantly clear during the network’s Monday lovefest for the hush money trial in New York when she praised “my DEIs” for bringing so many charges against the former President.

Delving into her usual race-baiting, Reid described it as “wonderfully poetic” that black people were prosecuting Trump. Without evidence, she suggested that it would upset Trump and his inner circle because they supposedly didn’t want black people going to law school:

[...]

Reid was absolutely giddy that “Donald Trump is being held to account by the very multicultural, multiracial democracy that he’s trying to dismantle.” She added that “there’s something poetic and actually wonderful about that” and said it was proof of “something good about our country that we’re still capable of having that happen.” 

“Go, DEI! My DEIs are bringing it home on today!” she cheered, referring to left-wing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

The MRC’s anti-DEI crusade is all about portraying anyone who’s not a straight white male as incompetent diversity hires.

Graham spent his April 19 podcast pretending to be befuddled that Trump’s trial was found newsworthy, while lashing out at non-right-wing media for offering non-right-wing takes:

The Manhattan trial of Donald Trump on “hush money” charges drew hundreds of minutes of TV obsession this week. The pro-Biden media is now enjoying talking about a “split screen” of Trump stuck in court on trial, President Biden on the campaign trail. ABC morning host Michael Strahan reported on Trump “test[ing] the patience of the judge while President Biden hits the campaign trails in a battleground state.”

Meanwhile, the impeachment of Homeland Security Mayorkas was briefly covered and derided as a partisan stunt. George Stephanopoulos called it a “partisan” impeachment, unlike his salesmanship for the Trump impeachments. 

Managing Editor Curtis Houck has the details and clips. Reporters from ABC’s Mary Bruce to CBS’s Nancy Cordes helpfully spun for Biden’s campaign stops in Pennsylvania, where Biden said he’s a Scranton guy who understands the middle class, while Trump is a clueless rich guy working for the rich guys.

This split screen is exactly what the Democrats want — Trump pinned in the courtroom, Biden making weird clips in Wawa that are carefully staged to sell he’s “with it.” The music and lyrics suggest Trump has engaged in “hush money” payments to a porn star and is now caught in a “criminal fraud” trial, while Biden is the honest guy searching out the common man. It’s not “news,” it’s messaging. They can’t find time to cover Biden making bizarre gaffes like his implication that his Uncle Ambrose was eaten by cannibals when his plane crashed in World War II.

Graham is essentially demanding that all media outlets be as right-wing as Fox News, which relentlessly attacks Biden and censors most negative news about Trump. An April 21 post by Jorge Bonilla, however, featured the opposite complaint, complaining it was pointed out that the Trump trial would take up most of the media oxygen and crowd Biden out:

During the weekly panel discussion on NBC’s Meet The Press, Chief Foreign Correspondent Andrea Mitchell fretted about the trial of former President Donald Trump overshadowing everything President Joe Biden is doing on the campaign trail, to the point of referring to the present media environment as “The Trump Story”.

Watch as Mitchell compares the current Trump cycle crowding Biden to the 2016 news environment crowding Hillary Clinton, as aired on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday, April 21st, 2024:

Mitchell’s comparisons of the current Trump cycle to 2016 betray a fundamental lack of self-awareness. Donald Trump earned over $5 billion in free media throughout that cycle, largely because the media believed he’d be the easiest opponent en route to Hillary Clinton’s coronation. Mitchell’s portrayal of Clinton here is as a victim of history, and not as the failed beneficiary of the campaign to drown Trump in free media. This tracks with current coverage of President Biden as the purest victim of the calamities of the present day. Fast forward to 2024, and Mitchell fretting that the orchestrated effort to weaponize state and federal government against Trump, so as to secure a felony conviction against him ahead of the presidential election, is once and again overwhelming the news cycle and “crowding out” the Democrat that was supposed to benefit from these weaponized trials. 

Of course Bonilla made sure to bring it back to Trump being the victim because of “weaponized” justice — that is, the same justice normal Americans who commit crimes also face.

In an April 23 post, Tim Graham whined that CNN host Dana Bash “pulled out the usual ‘No Evidence fussing” when South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem portrayed the Trump trial as a conspiracy by Democrats to keep Trump in a courtroom and not on the campaign trail. Graham also cheered that Noem stated that prosecutors are “using a woman’s testimony [Stormy Daniels] who signed a letter saying that this affair did not happen, that she has testified in the past that this never occurred.” It was not mentioned that the MRC spent decades touting a woman, Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her even though she testified under oath that it never happened.

Bashing Stormy Daniels

As the trial moved to the stage of the initial incident behind the changes — Trump’s payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels to cover up their affair during the 2016 election — the MRC started taking more aim at Daniels herself. A May 8 post by Mark Finkelstein cheered that a commentator criticized Daniels’ testimony:

MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos has once again proven himself to be an independent thinker, someone who calls them as he sees them and doesn’t dutifully toe the liberal media line.

[...]

Cevallos was back at his iconoclastic truth-telling on today’s Morning Joe. He repeatedly called Stormy Daniels’ testimony in Donald Trump’s hush money trial a “major issue” available to the defense for the appeal of any possible conviction, which could lead to it being overturned. The notion was that her testimony was excessively prejudicial to Trump. Cevallos analogized the situation to the recent overturning of one of Harvey Weinstein’s convictions on the grounds that overly prejudicial testimony had been admitted.

Cevallos mentioned that even though trial judge Juan Merchan had rejected a defense motion for a mistrial based on Daniels’ testimony, he did acknowledge that some of her testimony perhaps should not have been allowed. 

Finkelstein followed up with a post two days later complaining that Trump’s sleaziness as displayed through Daniels’ testimony will hurt him with women voters — and still found a way to play whataboutism:

On CNN This Morning, CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston said that porn star Stormy Daniels claiming in court that Donald Trump didn’t use a condom (“protection”) during their alleged sexual encounter constitutes a “sordid detail” that will hurt Trump with women voters in swing states. 

[...]

Host Kasie Hunt gleefully agreed with Preston, chuckling as she said, “It’s all very sordid.” No qualifiers from anyone on the panel about the porn star’s claims being “alleged.” The veracity of her testimony was seemingly taken as a given. And CNN has been gavel-to-gavel “sordid” during Stormy Daniels Week.

Meghan Hays, a former Biden aide, was also only too happy to agree, saying that come September and October, those sordid “details” would be highlighted in TV ads targeting moderate women voters. Preston should know a thing or two about sordid sexual details in the lives of prominent politicians. He’s a former aide to . . . Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Graham complained in his May 10 podcast that Hillary Clinton went on “Morning Joe” to talk about the trial and Daniels:

Now we’re reliving 2016 in a Manhattan courtroom, and Stormy Daniels was the star witness this week. The richest vein of hypocrisy was Hillary accusing Trump on hush money. He “went to such great lengths to try to squash, bury, kill stories, pay off people, because he understood the electoral significance of them.” As if the Clintons never tried to squash and kill stories by female accusers! 

Graham didn’t mention that what Trump did in working with the National Enquirer to squash the story before the election is “election interference,” but its own definition of what it accused the non-right-wing media did with the Hunter Biden laptop story.

The next day, Graham touted Bill Maher trashing Daniels’ testimony:

On Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the host complained about how the Democrats from Merrick Garland on down “blew it at every turn” on creating legal problems for Trump, so now before the election, “it’s Stormy or bust.” Even there, Maher argued porn star Stormy Daniels is a “bad witness” because she has changed her story in front of this jury, from empowered porn actress to victim.

Maher said: “Let me show you a little video. This is when I had Stormy on in 2018 and first I asked her about why she had sex with trump. Listen to that, and then listen to what she says after that and we’re going to talk about the trial because it’s quite at variance with what she said to me in 2018.”

First she said “I have no idea” why she allegedly had sex with Trump. Maher said “you said this is not a #MeToo case,” and she agreed: “I wasn’t attacked or raped or coerced of blackmailed... they tried to shove me in the #MeToo box to further their own agenda. First of all, I didn’t want any part of that because it’s not the truth and I’m not a victim in that regard.”

Maher said “That’s not what she’s saying now. She’s talking about he was bigger and blocking the way. It’s all the #MeToo buzzwords. She said there was a power, an imbalance of power for sure. My hands were shaking so hard. Said she blacked out. Blacked out? She’s a porn star!”

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni tried to joke he might black out with Trump, too. Maher crudely said she has sex with strangers routinely.

New York Post columnist Douglas Murray agreed with Maher: “Everyone who is hanging on the hope of Stormy Daniels being the way to get Trump in prison is going to have another disappointment coming.”

Graham rehashed a lot of this in his May 15 column:

It’s hard to watch the incessant gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Donald Trump trial in Manhattan without feeling like you’re traveling in a time warp back to 2016. We’re back reliving the “Access Hollywood” tape and talk of how Trump would have never been elected except porn star Stormy Daniels accepted a six-figure check to keep quiet.

The richest vein of hypocrisy on this adultery-mangles-electability question flows through the Clintons. Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to denounce Trump for squashing the bimbo stories. It was typically shameless. She said: “I think the defendant, the former president, knew exactly what he was doing when he went to such great lengths to try to squash, bury, kill stories, pay off people, because he understood the electoral significance of them.”

Again, Graham didn’t mention the fact that, by his employer’s own definition, election interference took place. Still, he did concede that paying hush money to a porn star is probably not a good look, yet he finds a way to play the Clinton Equivocation card anyway:

One can only imagine how Melania Trump processed the Stormy Daniels tale, but paying a non-disclosure agreement isn’t exactly maintaining your innocence. That’s why the Democratic prosecutors in New York are pumping this out on CNN and MSNBC, hour on the hour. The Left thinks those religious conservatives are bothered by this, and it should cause them to vote for someone else, preferably that “devout Catholic” Joe Biden.

But Hillary has always waged war on anyone who would seek to damage her and Bill’s future in politics, and the media have always gushed over her warfare. 

Graham whined further:

The “larger story” was the “vast right-wing conspiracy.” In this election cycle, Democratic prosecutors lobbed 91 felony charges at Trump, and the networks largely refuse to even describe them as Democrats, let alone a vast left-wing conspiracy.

Neither Graham nor the MRC has proven the existence of a “left-wing conspiracy” — they have simply played guilt-by-association that proves nothing but gets right-wing clicks.