House Democrats are calling for live broadcasts of court proceedings in all of Donald Trump’s criminal cases. More than three dozen Democrats have written a letter to Judge Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the secretary of the Judicial Conference — the body that has jurisdiction over federal courts.
“It is imperative the Conference ensures timely access to accurate and reliable information surrounding these cases and all of their proceedings, given the extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions and the need for transparency,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
It was signed by, among others, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who served on the January 6 Committee, and it asked that the Judicial Conference “explicitly authorize the broadcasting of court proceedings in the cases of United States of America v. Donald J. Trump.”
Televise the trials of Donald Trump? In an election year? Are they insane?
Are we supposed to believe that crap about the “need for transparency” and the “extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions”? No need to worry about a political advantage that would fall to the Democrats, right? Their motives are so pure and noble, there’s no chance of any political considerations being paramount, am I right?
This has all the aspects of one of Stalin’s show trials from his Communist party purges in the 1930s. The pursuit of justice takes second place to the political lessons to be drawn from the prosecution. By prosecuting Trump for his actions in trying to overturn the 2020 election, Democrats are hoping to discourage other challenges to future elections. In effect, it gives them a “Get Out of Jail Free Card” to run roughshod over the Constitution and the law because everyone will be too intimidated to mention it.
The Wall Street Journal mentions another “accidental benefit” of a Trump trial in an election year.
The more the press is preoccupied by Mr. Trump’s courtroom dramas, the less public attention there will be to President Biden’s declining capacities or to the facts emerging about Mr. Biden’s promotion of the family business. (See nearby.) The indictments keep all eyes on Mr. Trump’s troubles rather than on Mr. Biden’s record or debates about the next four years.
Mr. Trump on trial also means his competitors for the GOP presidential nomination can barely get media attention. The press asks first and last what they think about Mr. Trump’s indictment, and then upbraids them if they aren’t sufficiently critical. Their policies, or differences with Mr. Trump, might as well be shouts in the forest. Chris Christie, who is Mr. Trump’s most vocal critic, is ignored except for what he says about Mr. Trump.
With another Trump indictment coming very soon in Georgia, the TV cameras are going to have a lot to cover.
Related: What if Trump Stops Playing Along?
“Given the historic nature of the charges brought forth in these cases, it is hard to imagine a more powerful circumstance for televised proceedings,” the letter said. “If the public is to fully accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for it to witness, as directly as possible, how the trials are conducted, the strength of the evidence adduced and the credibility of witnesses.”
Rarely has so much baloney been used to justify the unjustifiable. Why wouldn’t the public “fully accept the outcome” of a trial? What is meant by witnessing the proceedings “as directly as possible”? America has no business in the jury room, which is where Schiff and the Democrats want the televised hearings to go.
All of this has Democrats elated because they want Mr. Trump to be the Republican nominee. They hope GOP voters will respond to the indictments by nominating Mr. Trump as a form of political retribution. No matter that this essentially means Republicans would be letting Democrats choose their nominee.
And so we careen, without an apparent off-ramp, toward a 2024 campaign debate about a sitting President’s age and family business and what a former President did in 2020 as he tries to stay out of jail. To mention a quaint notion: This isn’t good for the country.
Both parties are far beyond what’s “good for the country” at this point. This is about power — getting it and hanging on to it. That’s why the Democrats have to turn Trump’s trials into the morality tale of a show trial.
Josef Stalin would be proud.
