https://wnymedia.net/2012/01/sabre-chat-with-brad-riter-today-at-12-noon/
Concurrent with Donald Trump's hush money trial finishing up its second week of prosecution testimony, the former president's emails to his supporters are becoming increasingly over-the-top and shrill, leading to speculation he is not only having donation problems but also the pressures of his legal problems are getting to him.
As noted by Salon's Chauncey DeVega who has been reporting on the former president's diminishing mental state and possible psychological problems, there is a growing vibe of panic in Trump's emails as evidenced by a recent one that blared: "All hell breaks loose in 24 hours!" and another declaring he is being held "hostage."
According to DeVega's report, the strident tone in the emails begging for donations are demonstrating an increasing spiral in victimhood as he sits day after day in a Manhattan courtroom while facing the possibility of jail time if convicted on just one of the 34 felony counts he is charged with related to paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
ALSO READ: A neuroscientist reveals how Trump and Biden's cognitive impairments are different
"With the beginning of Trump’s first criminal trial in New York, his emails have only become more extreme – and will only continue to – as the 2024 election and potentially three other criminal trials are closing in on him," he wrote before pointing to the recent Trump email that stated: "Friend, in 24 hours, the hearing on my GAG ORDER will begin. I COULD BE THROWN IN JAIL AT THAT VERY MOMENT! This is what the Hate-America Deep State has always dreamed of. STAND WITH TRUMP I won’t be able to campaign. I will be muzzled and silent. And Democrats will have free rein to destroy our country."
That led DeVega to argued that, "Of course, Donald Trump is lying. There is no substantive evidence to support his fabulist conspiratorial delusions-fantasies of persecution and other harm. The corrupt ex-president is in no way a victim, except perhaps of his own apparent sociopathy if not outright psychopathy, and other parts of his obviously diseased mind."
Add to that, he wrote that there is a sense that the former president is struggling to raise money to fund both his multitude of legal teams fending off criminal indictments as well as his presidential campaign.
RELATED: Trump howls about 'unconstitutional gag order' in all-caps early morning rant
To make that point, he cited a recent Washington Post report that relayed, "In the years after Donald Trump lost the presidency to Joe Biden, Trump sent so many emails and text messages asking for money that Republican consultants warned his mailing lists could become useless. The former president’s friends told him that they were being asked for too much, too often, and Trump himself ordered aides at one point to slow the solicitations. Some of his fans, pockets emptied, mailed handwritten letters apologizing for not being able to give more. Now, as Trump and Biden prepare for a rematch, Trump’s vaunted small-dollar fundraising operation is not bringing in as much money as it once did."
"They will need to find a way to trigger more fear, pain, discomfort, terror, and other negative emotions among the MAGA people and other prospective Trump donors and voters. Those negative emotions will be the motivation for giving a literal form of protection money to Donald Trump and the MAGA leadership," the Salon columnist suggested.
You can read more here.
As Donald Trump's first criminal trial got underway, proceedings received extensive coverage in the media.
But over at Fox News, the story is not the center of the news world — and the network's focus was more centered around Trump's grievances over the trial, which accuses him of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment made to adult movie star Stormy Daniels.
According to The Daily Beast's Justin Baragona, "The rest of the cable news landscape has devoted round-the-clock coverage to the trial," but Fox has "mostly dipped in and out."
"Spending the bulk of its time on the pro-Palestinian protests at Ivy League schools, Fox News has centered a large portion of its Trump trial coverage on criticizing the case and the court’s treatment of the former president," Baragona wrote.
Baragona contends that Fox's approach to coverage of Trump's trial is causing its hosts and guests to take "increasingly goofy and zany positions" in order to defend Trump, and he cites a number of examples, including from The Five host Jesse Watters.
Also read: 'Perma-scowl': Observers say Trump is not doing well at hiding frustration from jurors
“The guy needs exercise. He’s usually golfing. And so, you’re going to put a man who’s almost 80, sitting in a room like this on his butt for all that time? It's not healthy,” Watters said during a segment this Monday.
“You know how big of a health nut I am. He needs sunlight and he needs activity. He needs to be walking around, he needs action. It’s really cruel and unusual punishment to make a man do that. And any time he moves, they threaten to throw him in prison!”
Baragona then points to the roundtable show Outnumbered, where GOP operative and regular Fox News guest Ian Prior compared Trump being criminally tried to the fall of Rome.
“The very problem that we have here is we are weaponizing the justice system to go after former presidents. You back up 2,000 years and this is the kind of thing they would do in the Roman Republic that led to the end of the Roman Republic,” Prior said. “Caesar is out there and says if you do not come back to Rome…and face prosecution, what did he do? He crossed the Rubicon and there’s the end of the Republic.”
Then there's Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt, whose take on the matter didn't make much sense to Baragona, and he asked his readers to decide what the following commentary means.
“Does this set a precedent for other people who want to run for president?” Earhardt sighed. “What if they've done something like this in the past and they can say, 'Oh, well, they told me in the 8th grade they want to run for president, so since they paid off a girl when they were 30 years old, then that was election interference!'”
But the craziest take, according to Baragona, came from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
“I am deeply worried that tomorrow, a totally corrupt judge and a totally corrupt district attorney are going to try to put a former president of the United States, candidate of his party, and front-runner in the polls in jail. Now, I think this is so horrendous that there has to be some way to reach out to the Supreme Court,” Gingrich said on Monday night’s Hannity.
“This is literally like some of the civil rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s. The New York system is now so deeply corrupted and it's so bitterly, deeply anti-Trump.”
Read more at The Daily Beast.
