How many Trump indictments have we had so far? Four? Sixteen? Thirty-seven? Sorry — the never-ending coverage makes it feel like there’s a new Jan. 6 jaywalking charge added every day.
In fact, the only novel part of the former president’s indictment on charges in Georgia is watching how the establishment media reacted.
CNN said the “indictment moves America closer to an election precipice.” The Associated Press described it as “what might be the most sprawling legal case against” the former president.
The New York Times acknowledged a bit of indictment fatigue in its headline, “Trump Indictment, Part IV: A Spectacle That Has Become Surreally Routine.” (So there’s the exact number.)
However, the Gray Lady tried to underscore the gravity of the whole thing in the subhead: “The former president has sought to systematically drain the suspense from his criminal cases. But the Trial(s) of the Century loom.”
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Yes, it’s not the frequency or the profoundly suspect timing of these indictments that “drain the suspense” from them, according to the Times. Trump is “systematically” draining it — for which, no doubt, some Democratic prosecutor somewhere will find a flimsy pretext to indict him again.
However, the winner of Monday’s indictment self-own sweepstakes had to be MSNBC, which managed to come out on top not just through mere hyperbole but through good ol’ fashioned hypocrisy — thanks, in no small part, to a woman synonymous with it.
Anchoring MSNBC’s coverage of the event was Rachel Maddow, who was starting (and finishing off) her grueling one-day-a-week schedule on the peacock network’s cable-news annex. Joining her was a guest who should know something about baselessly contesting the results of a presidential election: Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic standard-bearer in 2016.
Bringing Hillary Clinton on while the man who defeated her — and may, indeed, defeat the current president in the 2024 election — is already a bad look for reasons I shouldn’t have to spell out for you.
Did Hillary Clinton lose the 2016 election fair and square?
Yes: 100% (1 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
However, if I do, fear not — because Maddow and Hillary spelled them out explicitly in a clip that’s going bad-viral on social media.
In the snippet from the interview, which lasts just under two minutes, Maddow tells Hillary that “if bad actors tell us falsely that every election is stolen and that the only way an election is trustworthy is that if they come out on top of it, it tells you something not just about that person or that moment, but it wounds us as a democracy in a way that’s hard to repair.”
“What do you think about how we get better?” Maddow proceeded to ask Clinton.
Clinton went on to say that “The truth matters” and “I think having these cases be brought and be brought in such a professional manner” helps. She went on to talk about the “weaponization of loneliness” which led to “divisiveness, the undermining of faith in ourselves, in each other, respect for our institutions, the rule of law, all of that.”
“You know, there were trends before,” she said. “I mean, we have seen how people will become more isolated, less community-oriented. Less civically minded. Then we see how social media and technology has certainly accelerated a lot of those trends.”
Rachel Maddow says to Hillary Clinton “if bad actors tell us falsely that every election is stolen and that the only way an election is trustworthy is that if they come out on top of it, it tells you something not just about that person but it wounds us as a democracy in a way… pic.twitter.com/QEt1yl9FhG
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 15, 2023
That clip was posted by conservative Twitter personality Greg Price, who — again, if you needed it spelled out — reminded us in two social media posts (below) why Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow might possibly be the two worst possible messengers for an argument that puts the blame on eroding trust in American institutions:
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 15, 2023
Apparently, both of them have worse memories than Joe Biden. Who knew?
Let’s be clear: From the moment Donald J. Trump was elected 45th president of the United States, both of these women did everything in their power to convince Americans the election was stolen, facts be damned.
As for Clinton, the video evidence is right there: She literally says, absent any real evidence, that 2016 was “stolen” from her. Maddow, meanwhile, became such a purveyor of Russiagate-based disinformation regarding collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin that even the left began calling her out when her excesses were too brazen to ignore.
This isn’t even mentioning the fact Hillary’s election denial went beyond just her loss in 2016; in 2009, according to ABC News, during a visit to Nigeria as secretary of state, she compared Al Gore’s loss in the 2000 U.S. presidential election to a 2007 Nigerian general election widely believed to be rigged.
Granted, the Georgia case goes a bit beyond Trump merely believing the 2020 election was improperly conducted and taking steps to rectify what he saw as voter fraud — although it’s not as far off as the media or prosecutors would have you believe.
That said, on MSNBC, we were told that the root of the problem that sewed widespread distrust in the American electoral system was, to quote the Notorious HRC, “divisiveness, the undermining of faith in ourselves, in each other, respect for our institutions, the rule of law, all of that.”
And who better — or worse, depending on how much irony you can take — to drive home that point than two of the figures who have, since the turn of the 21st century, done the most to encourage political divisiveness, undermine faith in ourselves and the rule of law, and trample all over respect for the institution of fair elections?
Coming up next, Maddow interviews Sen. Pot on former President Kettle’s indictment for allegedly being black. Unless, of course, another headline-hungry prosecutor presses another set of politically motivated charges against Trump during the commercial break.
