Raw Story

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.

Former President Donald Trump has a new demeaning nickname for Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who revealed unflattering details about his criminal trial behavior and challenged his excuses for a lack of protesters outside.

The former president laid out his new insults Tuesday in a lengthy Truth Social rant in which he also argued his supporters had been blocked by police from gathering outside the Manhattan court house where his hush money trial is unfolding.

"Thousands of people were turned away from the Courthouse in Lower Manhattan by steel stanchions and police, literally blocks from the tiny side door from where I enter and leave," Trump wrote. "It is an armed camp to keep people away."

This is a repeat of an earlier claim debunked by reporters at the scene who say it is blatantly false.

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"Maggot Hagerman of The Failing New York Times, falsely reported that I was disappointed with the crowds," Trump declared. "No, I’m disappointed with Maggot, and her lack of writing skill, and that some of these many police aren’t being sent to Columbia and NYU to keep the schools open and the students safe. The Legal Scholars call the case a Scam that should never have been brought. I call it Election Interference and a personal hit job by a conflicted and corrupt Judge who shouldn’t be allowed to preside over this Political Hoax. New York Justice is being reduced to ashes, and the World is breathlessly watching. Hopefully, Appellate Courts can save it, and all of the companies that are fleeing to other jurisdictions. They can no longer take a chance on New York Justice!"

Haberman, who has been covering Trump for years, long enjoyed close access to him while he was in the White House, even posing with him for a smiling photo. But Trump's attitude toward Haberman has soured as she has covered his behavior in the courtroom, including his embarrassing inability to stay awake.

Trump's other claim in the post, that huge crowds of his supporters turned up to rally for him in Manhattan and were turned away by police, also appears not to be true, as NBC News' Vaughn Hillyard posted video footage of the streets around the courthouse open to traffic, and barely anyone demonstrating in support of the former president.

Haberman herself has also debunked the idea that local streets were closed off during the trial, a point that has further enraged Trump.

Former president Donald Trump's attorney Todd Blanche is stuck between a rock and a hard place in the form of a "crazy, unreasonable client," according to former federal prosecutor Harry Litman.

Litman's analysis Tuesday came on the heels of proceedings in the criminal hush money trial that saw Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Trump's lawyers debating whether the former president had violated his gag order.

Trump's lawyer, Blanche, was ridiculed by legal experts who said he failed to craft an argument without case law to back it up.

"I don't have any cases," Blanche said in court. "It's just common sense."

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"You're losing all credibility," Judge Juan Merchan replied.

"Hard to maintain with a straight face," former prosecutor Joyce Vance said of the battle between Blanche and the judge.

CNN's legal analyst called it an outright "disaster," because it went so poorly for Trump.

According to Litman, this exchange put Trump's lawyer in difficult position.

"Blanche needs badly to work hard to regain Merchan's trust, but he's between a rock and a hard place," Litman said. "He can't look weak in front of his crazy, unreasonable client."

Trump's former impeachment attorney, Robert Ray, tried to downplay the exchange, saying he's had judges say things like that to him before.

Speaking to MSNBC Tuesday, Ray explained that Blanche likely conveyed "he wouldn't be so easily intimidated."

Former Brooklyn prosecutor Charles Coleman disagreed, saying that running afoul of the judge this early in the trial was a problem.

"That was the most explosive," he told Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday afternoon. "That is — for as accomplished an attorney as Todd Blanche is, I don't understand the argument he made. To have a judge tell you that you are losing credibility this early in a trial is really, really dangerous ground to operate on."

Even teenagers were ridiculing Blanche. Two students came to court to observe the trial, including one 14-year-old who thought the exchange between Merchan and Blanche was "funny."

"When the defense attorney was basically annihilated by the judge," said Hope Harrington outside the courthouse. "It was — it really made my day. It was really funny. He had no evidence whatsoever."

Prosecutors in Donald Trump's hush money trial said the former president violated a gag order 10 times, but they did not seek jail time as a sanction.

During a Tuesday morning hearing, Assistant District Attorney Chris Conroy explained how Trump had attacked jurors, prospective jurors, and potential witnesses.

“What happened here is precisely what this order was designed to prevent, and the defendant doesn't care,” Conroy explained. “We are not yet seeking an incarceratory penalty, yet the defendant seems to be angling for that."

ALSO READ: A neuroscientist reveals how Trump and Biden's cognitive impairments are different

Trump's attorney, Todd Blanche, appeared to be defiant.

"Just to set the record very straight and clear: Pres. Trump does, in fact, know what the gag order allows him to do and not allow him to do," Blanche told New York Justice Juan Merchan.

It was not clear when Merchan would rule on the violations.

From inside the courtroom on Tuesday, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin revealed that Judge Juan Merchan was "losing his patience" with Donald Trump's lawyer Todd Blanche.

In a testy morning hearing into whether Trump has violated a gag order put in place to stop him attacking members of the jury and witnesses, the judge reamed off examples of attacks — with likely witnesses in his targets including Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, among others.

Blanche, meanwhile, tried to explain away Trump's actions.

Rubin explained from the courtroom that the judge asked Blanche to give him an example of Trump's intentions in one of his posts, and he consistently failed to do so, leading Merchan to react.

"Judge Merchan is losing his patience," MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard said, reading text messages from Rubin. Merchan is "accusing Blanche of not answering his questions. So we're just three social media posts through the ten, and Judge Merchan is clearly frustrated with the attorney for Donald Trump's lack of ability to articulate on behalf of his own client his intention with those social media statements."

ALSO READ: A neuroscientist explains how Trump is using existential fear to win the election

"I am asking a question," Merchan said, according to Rubin. "I keep asking you over and over to give me an example, and I'm not getting an answer."

Merchan went on to say that it was 10:30 a.m., and they'd been debating "for an hour now, and he's looking for an answer."

See the report below or at the link here.

'You’re not giving me an answer': Judge loses his patience with Trump lawyer youtu.be

Details never before made public are expected to be admissible in Donald Trump's latest New York trial — and onlookers are expecting them to be revealing.

New York Times investigative reporter Sue Craig said she was "struck" by the "new information" revealed in Monday's opening statements, which includes a series of text messages from National Enquirer reporters involved in investigating the stories of adult movie actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had affairs with Trump.

One of the text messages, Craig said, read: "What have we done?"

Trump's latest trial kicked off in earnest Monday as each side delivered their opening speeches over Trump's 34-count felony indictment over the hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

"We've heard about text messages that went back and forth with the National Enquirer when they went out to see Karen McDougal, one of the women who had a relationship with Donald Trump," Craig said.

"They were trying to confirm if the story was true."

Craig noted that one of the lawyers representing McDougal was involved in election night texting with somebody at the tabloid, which was previously unknown.

Read Also: A criminologist explains why Trump’s Manhattan trial is the biggest threat to his freedom

"We'll see a lot of that come through. And David Pecker was not on the stand for very long, but just hearing the details that we got, the idea that ... reporters were given about $10,000 to get that story," recalled Craig.

"And I wasn't clear if that included payment to somebody or expenses and payment, but anything above that, he would have to sign off on it. What that told me was the payments that went to Karen McDougal, that went to Stormy Daniels, were unusual. They were high."

She referenced a Trump doorman who was paid $30,000 to stay quiet about a possible Trump love child. McDougal was given $150,000, while Daniels was given $130,000.

During the second half of the show, Lawfare's Anna Bower agreed with the assessment that there was new information that dropped and there will likely be even more. There is some conversation about what will ultimately be admissible out of that information that is new.

"We heard a lot about phone records the prosecution intends to introduce," Bower said. "So, I think that we certainly will see new evidence. But the question is — there were these questions about whether it would be admissible for hearsay reasons."

See the video below or at the link here.

Hearing prosecutors read the 'Access Hollywood' words was 'cringier' than Trump's voice youtu.be