NEW YORK — If there are bragging rights associated with Donald Trump praising his legal acumen when he speaks after a day of testimony in his criminal trial, Fox News analyst Andy McCarthy has been cited at least a dozen times.
The former president and current presidential candidate has routinely stepped onto a metal barricade outside the courthouse in Lower Manhattan to face the cameras and have the last word on the day’s proceedings. As the trial winds down, his speeches – he rarely acknowledges shouted questions – consist more often of reading friendly commentators’ words from a sheaf of papers.
In addition to McCarthy, a former Manhattan prosecutor and National Review writer, Fox commentators Jonathan Turley, Gregg Jarrett and Mark Levin receive frequent messages.
“Every legal scholar says, ‘They don’t have a case,’” Trump said more than once as he read supportive quotes.
McCarthy, mentioned by the former president three times on May 13, is a “great analyst,” Trump said. Some favorites receive personal praise: Byron York is “a great person, a great reporter.” Alan Dershowitz is also “a great person,” Trump said. Occasionally someone from CNN appears. MSNBC gets the silent treatment.
For television, New York’s ban on cameras in courtrooms means a lot of airtime for legal analysts. It evokes the form’s high point three decades ago, when the OJ Simpson murder trial made names like Jeffrey Toobin, Nancy Grace and Greta Van Susteren known. Fox’s Jarrett, who worked at Court TV in the 1990s, spans eras.
Naturally, it is not difficult to find someone who contradicts Trump. On television news networks that extensively cover the trial, the prevailing opinions tend to reflect the audience they seek: little sympathy for the prosecution’s case on Fox, equally hard to find praise for the defense on MSNBC. On CNN, it’s more mixed.
Savvy legal minds, like Chuck Rosenberg speaking on MSNBC on Wednesday, note that it would be foolish to predict an outcome. The only opinions that really matter are those of the jurors.
More subtle coverage can often be found off-screen. The Sunday edition of The New York Times, for example, published a story quoting experts that concluded: “Several experts say the prosecution continues to lose its case.” In the same day’s opinion section, columnist Ross Douthat concluded that the case has been a political victory for Trump so far.
“Just as even paranoid people can have enemies, even sinful demagogues can face politically motivated prosecution—and stand to gain from the appearance of legal persecution,” Douthat wrote. “And this appearance, so far, has been the political gift of judgment for Donald Trump.”
MSNBC devoted much of its day to Trump’s legal issues long before the current trial. Former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann is a strong presence there; he also contributes to a podcast, “Prosecuting Donald Trump,” with fellow analyst Mary McCord.
Even MSNBC’s biggest stars, including Rachel Maddow, spent time in court. After hearing Trump’s defense earlier this week, she reported that it was “discursive, lengthy and uninteresting.”
Fox commentators in this case attracted much of Trump’s attention. Turley made 47 appearances to talk about the trial on Fox’s daily shows from the start of the trial through May 15, with McCarthy logging 35, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters.
McCarthy previously prosecuted terrorism cases in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and represented Rudolph Giuliani. Turley is a professor at George Washington University’s law school and founded the Elderly Prisoners Project, which helps seek the release of geriatric inmates.
Writing about the trial in National Review, McCarthy said that “Trump should be acquitted for the simplest of reasons: prosecutors cannot prove their case.” He criticized on-air prosecution witness and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, saying Cohen’s dishonesty and bias against Trump will be problems he will have to overcome with the jury.
Turley, speaking with Fox’s Jesse Watters last week, called Cohen “the most compromised and unbelievable witness in the history of the federal legal system.” In another appearance on Fox, Turley said the judge, Juan Merchan, shouldn’t even hand the case over to the jury.
“I think this case is over,” Turley said. “They did not state the basis for a crime.”
On Fox this week, anchor Martha MacCallum said that “if you look at the legal experts on the other channels, this case is airtight.”
The network on Monday, as it always does, aired Trump’s daily briefing at 5 p.m. ET — the time of “The Five,” cable news’ most popular program. MSNBC did not carry Trump. CNN showed the former president and immediately followed up with fact-checking.
As happened that day, and occasionally others, Trump singled out some CNN commentators for praise. He cited CNN’s Laura Coates, Elie Honig and Tim Parlatore, the latter a former Trump lawyer hired as an analyst.
CNN fact-checker Tom Foreman said Trump was doing “a lot of cherry-picking” in his quotes.
“It’s certainly true that we have some panelists who say this is not a good case,” said CNN’s Jake Tapper. “There are also people who think otherwise. And that’s what we try to do here: bring a diversity of points of view.”
___
David Bauder writes about media for the Associated Press. Follow him on
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
