How The Hush-Money Trial Will In Fact Hurt Trump

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Pundits disagree about whether Alvin Bragg’s criminal case against Donald Trump will hurt Trump’s electoral chances.

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Pro-Trump forces say that the trial will only energize his base. The trial’s a witch-hunt! Trump didn’t do anything wrong! Democratic New York judges and juries are out to get Trump! It’s all an outrage!

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Pro-Biden forces say that Trump’s base is already on Trump’s side. The question is the effect that trial coverage will have on independent voters and suburban women, who will be critical in the 2024 election. Trial evidence about Trump’s affairs with Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal and his falsification of business records to conceal those affairs surely won’t earn Trump any new voters in those groups, so the trial will hurt him.

I have a slightly different take on the trial: The trial will help Biden because press coverage will focus on the undoubtedly newsworthy evidence that will be presented at trial. The trial will thus distract the press from its usual business of regularly inflating tiny Trump issues into screaming clickbait headlines that suggest we should all be at DEFCON 3.

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For the past several months, the media’s desire to attract readers (or viewers) may have been hurting the Democratic Party’s chance of winning the presidential election.

I understand the need to attract readers. Historically, writers could not be judged by the number of readers they attracted. A publisher distributed a magazine or newspaper. Subscribers read the portions of the publication that appealed to them. Nobody knew exactly which articles were attracting exactly how many eyeballs, so writers didn’t have to be concerned about whether their product in particular drew much attention.

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Oh, how the times have changed.

Many writers content creators these days are vitally concerned with the numbers of viewers they attract. Readership affects advertising rates; it can affect pay; it affects careers. Even on less materialistic grounds, attracting hundreds or thousands of shares or comments lets a writer know that the writer’s work product struck a chord. People are reading — perhaps even thinking about — ideas that the author expressed. That’s flattering; it’s exhilarating.

There’s no better way to attract readers than to mention Donald Trump’s name (and throw in a couple of adjectives) in a headline. Love him or hate him, everyone wants to read about him.

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Writers know this, so they have been writing endless articles about Trump — praising his most recent insights or condemning his most recent atrocities, depending on the writer’s politics — and drawing many readers to see what lies beneath a clickbait headline.

This is inevitable.

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But maybe this hurts the Democrats.

Maybe a little bit of focus on Trump’s true sins would help the Democrats.

Fundamentally, Trump’s offense that disqualifies him from holding office again occurred on January 6, 2021. You may or may not believe that Trump engaged in insurrection on that day. You may or may not believe that he incited a riot. You may believe that it was Antifa, or Trump supporters, or undercover FBI agents, or routine visitors to the Capitol who stormed the Capitol Building on January 6.  But whatever you believe, you know that Trump stood idly by for three hours, doing absolutely nothing while televisions broadcast images of the Capitol being ransacked.

The Capitol was being attacked, and Trump didn’t give a damn.

No matter who was doing the ransacking — Antifa or Trump supporters — a president who cared about the United States would have stood before cameras — or tweeted, or done something, anything — to tell the rioters to stop: “I don’t know who you rioters are. Maybe you’re with me; maybe you’re against me. But if I can influence you in any way, please stop the assault on the Capitol. This really is not what I intended at all! Please stop!”

Perhaps Trump’s speech would have worked and stopped the assault. Perhaps not.

But Trump didn’t even try.

He’s unfit to be our president.

Period.

Unfortunately, the desire to attract readers takes the public’s eye off the ball. Writers have elevated Trump’s minor transgressions to screaming headlines in the never-ending pursuit of readers. Lesser offenses — “Trump said that there might (or might not) be a bloodbath;” “Trump mispronounced some words at his rally last night;” “Trump’s position on Ukraine is terribly wrong” — might attract readers, but they’re far less important than Trump’s cardinal sin on January 6, and the lesser criticisms give us Trump fatigue.

I’ve heard intelligent conservatives say, “Trump disgusts me. But I watch the media beat up on him every day for trivial things. I’m thinking of voting for the guy just because the liberals are so out of control.”

The criminal trial may help with this. The trial may distract the press from its hysterical coverage of Trump’s every word and replace those stories with things that are indisputably newsworthy. Evidence will be presented daily that reflects poorly on Trump. Writers will have plenty to say that will attract eyeballs, even without screaming about irrelevant stuff. For the next month or so, maybe we’ll get a reprieve from Trump’s supposed offenses while the press focuses on Trump’s actual (criminal) offenses.

Writing about the trial will be justifiable.

Writing clickbait headlines about Trump’s latest speech is not justifiable. The headline draws readers, but it does harm.

It does harm because some folks, such as my intelligent conservative friend, sympathize with Trump when he’s attacked so regularly.

It does harm because we can’t stay at DEFCON 3 for the next six months.

It does harm to me personally because talking about Trump all the time is so damned exhausting.

I suspect the Biden campaign would like to tamp down some of the clickbait coverage of Trump, but the campaign can’t: The folks running Biden’s presidential campaign don’t control what tens of thousands of independent content creators are doing every day. But the criminal trial in New York will do this for the campaign: It will cause coverage of Trump to focus on something that matters, rather than focusing on whatever stray comment Trump may have made yesterday.

OK. I have this column behind me. And it mentions Trump in the headline, so a lot of people will probably read it.

What will I write about Trump next week?

Oh! The criminal trial! Perfect!

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].

Topics

Alvin Bragg, Courts, Donald Trump, Mark Herrmann, Trials