“Judge Marchan told the jury that they do not need unanimity to reach a guilty verdict,” Fox News’ John Roberts wrote on social media. “Four people could agree on one crime, four people could agree on another crime, and four people could agree on yet another crime. The judge said he would treat the 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.”
As people were quick to point out, this is false. Trump’s 34 felony charges allege that he falsified (or had business records falsified) to cover up another crime, specifically a conspiracy to influence the election by illegal means. Marchan’s argument was not that unanimity was not necessary to convict Trump, but that it was. His argument was that the jury did not have to agree on the illegal means used in the conspiracy to find that Trump tried to cover up the conspiracy. Four of the jurors might think the illegal means were the falsification of other documents, and four might think the illegal means were violations of federal election law. It doesn’t matter.
Roberts’s scheme was quickly picked up by commentators on the right, who erupted in outrage: “How could this judge, already under fire from Trump’s allies, set the bar so low for sending Trump to prison?” He didn’t, but the right was led to believe that somehow he did, because most of what they had heard about the case for months was that the case and the judge presiding over it were illegitimate.
Donald Trump has deployed this tactic in response to investigations into his own behavior for years. When news reports about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election first emerged, Trump was quick to debunk them and accuse the intelligence officials who sourced them of being biased against him. Every accusation, no matter how well-founded, became a “hoax,” merely evidence of how those in power were trying to frame him — even when he was the most powerful man in the free world.
The safeguards against attempts to hold Trump accountable have been relentless and apparently successful. When CBS News recently asked Americans how they viewed Trump’s criminal trial, three-quarters of Republicans and Democrats said they had at least heard news about the trial. But three-quarters of Republicans also said they believed Trump was innocent, and most said they didn’t believe a jury would find him guilty. Among Democrats, opinions were reversed.
Why are the partisan views so different? Because the trial has been portrayed through a partisan lens, particularly by Trump and his allies. Trump has relentlessly criticized the judge and the trial process as biased. When Marchan restricted Trump from speaking ill of witnesses or others involved in the trial, Trump brandished a stack of papers at the reporter suggesting that a series of legal experts (almost uniformly right-leaning) agreed that this entire trial was improperly brought or is an example of deep-seated bias against Trump. Trump’s Truth Social account constantly floods its feed with such stories and posts from his allies. If you’ve heard from Trump at all, you’ve been subject to his condemnation of what’s going on in Manhattan over the past month.
Throughout the trial, Fox News spent less time talking about the trial or the Marchan case than its major competitors, but it aired more frequent segments in which its hosts and commentators mentioned “weaponization” and “loafers,” terms Trump has often used to suggest the political nature of the trial.
If you’re a Republican who follows Trump or watches Fox News, you’ve certainly heard a lot about this trial, and what you’ve likely heard is that it’s invalid, contrived, and an attempt to keep Trump off the campaign trail — either short-term while he’s in court, or long-term if he has to serve any prison time.
This effort to preempt an adverse outcome for his base is all too familiar: Four years ago, Trump engaged in a similar effort, spreading false claims about the risk of voter fraud as the 2020 presidential election approached. His goal then was similar to his goal now: to get his base to reject an adverse outcome by presenting it as illegitimate in advance.
But the vaccination effort not only serves to delegitimize the trial, it also serves to bolster his political standing. Since the first criminal charges were filed, it’s been clear that Trump sees his legal woes as intertwined with his political endeavors. That’s in part because being re-elected as president would allow him to potentially bury the federal charges he faces. And it’s also because Trump’s 2024 campaign is centered around the idea that he’s under attack and needs his supporters’ help. The trial has served that purpose well.
It is unclear how the jury in the Manhattan trial will weigh the evidence — the case is by no means clear-cut — but if they evaluate the evidence and the letter of the law and find that Trump committed the crimes he is charged with, there is little reason to think that outcome would be acceptable to Trump’s supporters on Fox News or elsewhere in the country.
If so many people are buying the rhetoric of Trump and his allies and refusing to accept that he lost the election, why are they now acknowledging the legitimacy of a trial that they said was invalid?
