Lefty Pundits Absolve Their Own Failures on Holding Trump Accountable for His Coup
Let me start this post with a quiz.
Who are the two Trump associates newly treated as co-conspirators in the October 2024 immunity brief?
The answer?
Steve Bannon and Mike Roman (yeah, sure, I gave a big hint).
While neither was added as a labeled c0-conspirator in the August 2024 superseding indictment (that is, as a CC1 through CC6, as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Ken Chesebro, [Jeffrey Clark], and Boris Epshteyn were), they were treated as co-conspirators in the immunity filing. Bannon was described in a list of the “private co-conspirators” early in the brief. And while the brief described Roman as an agent early on, when it described how he deliberately tried to stoke violence at the TCF Center in Detroit during the vote count in November 2020, it described him as a co-conspirator. Thus, both Bannon and Roman were treated as co-conspirators specifically in response to their premediations of violence.
A month before the election, in defiance of Trump’s efforts to suppress the information, Jack Smith introduced new details about how Trump premeditated violence in 2020. He revealed that the guy whom Trump pardoned on his way out the door in January 2021, the guy who was at that moment sitting in Danbury Prison for refusing to tell the January 6 Committee about that premeditated violence, had been involved in the plot from the beginning.
When I asked this question on Bluesky, four people eventually got the answer correct, but most people struggled. One extremely knowledgable legal writer got Bannon, but not Roman. A higher profile pundit confessed they had “no clue.”
This may seem like a totally picayune detail. Except I spent yesterday watching pundit after pundit expounding with confidence about what happened with the DOJ investigation, virtually all of whom got basic details of the investigation wrong. Which is why I thought I’d test whether they knew this detail. If you don’t know that Smith newly treated Bannon and Roman as co-conspirators, you don’t know where the investigation might have been headed when SCOTUS stalled everything in December 2023. You don’t know what happened in the case right in the middle of election season. That is, a legally significant — premeditation of violence!! — development happened when you should have been paying closest attention … and you missed it.
And as a result, you did nothing to convey that to voters. I’m not sure these lefty pundits, many of whom are wailing that someone at DOJ didn’t tell them what was going on, even noted the immunity brief.
Like a lot of pundits writing yesterday, Dan Drezner blamed a slew of people for not holding Trump accountable, claiming with no evidence that Merrick Garland waited “too long” before turning to Trump and ignoring the delays and some of the legal shenanigans SCOTUS caused. He ranked his villains in what he views as their ascending order of responsibility.
- Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020 but due to a combination of hubris, age, and ego stayed in the 2024 race far too long, stacking the deck against anyone who challenged Donald Trump;
- Merrick Garland, who took way too long to mobilize any serious Justice Department investigation into Trump’s myriad felonies;
- The Supreme Court of the United States, who repeatedly, persistently evinced zero interest in applying any legal or constitutional constraint on Donald Trump. As a result, no future president will feel constrained in any way whatsoever by the Emoluments Clause, Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, as it turns out, pretty much any law that might otherwise restrict the President of the United States;
- Mitch McConnell, who could have tipped the scales on Trump’s second impeachment (and made it pretty clear afterwards how he felt about Trump) but, in the end, did not vote to convict;
- Congressional Republicans, who acted and sounded pretty goddamn terrified when the rioters attacked on January 6th. If they had all decided to jump at once and vote to impeach and then convict Trump, his political power would have evaporated. Instead, scared of their own partisans, they capitulated to Trump;
- Donald J. Trump, who whipped his supporters into a frenzy, attempted to organize slates of alternate electors, refused to recognize the results of any election that he has lost, and has promised to pardon those who violated laws to serve his interests. And finally,
- The American people, who had plenty of opportunities not to vote for Trump again. In early 2024, Republicans could have gone to the polls and selected a Trump clone who had not committed multiple felonies. In November 2024 voters could have gone to the polls and selected a different candidate who, to repeat a theme, had not committed multiple felonies. And yet, in the end, a plurality voted for the toddler.
The list doesn’t include lefty pundits, the people who might be expected to identify salient details of the investigation — like that Jack Smith got evidence that Trump and his c0-conspirators premeditated violence — the people who might drive the press focus on those salient details.
He doesn’t include the people whose job it is to be informed of and comment on such matters, who yesterday, affirmed that role loudly.
So he held American voters responsible. But not the people who failed to inform voters of key details in the investigation of Trump.
The failure to incur any electoral cost on Trump for his coup attempt is a political failure. It reflects the political failure to rebut Trump’s relentless campaign of grievance. In his list, Drezner conveyed that by assigning to voters even more responsibility than Trump himself. Yet he doesn’t include the political failures — his own political failure — of the pundit class at all.
None of these pundits did.
It is, perhaps, a gimmick to ask the pundits who sternly weighed in yesterday to take a simple test.
It is, perhaps, too much to ask from pundits that they do the homework for the gig.
It is, perhaps, churlish to expect that pundits hold themselves to account for this political failure.
The flood of columns we got yesterday, some of it quite good? That’s what was needed in February. And March. And April. And May. A constant stream of punditry focused on Trump’s assault on democracy. More often than not, that punditry was focused on Merrick Garland, not Trump. And in the vacuum, Trump sold his grievance narrative to millions of Americans, many unaware of the actual details of the case or — more importantly — the justice of the case against him.
The failure to hold Trump accountable is a failure with many authors. It’s time lefty pundits consider their own role in that.
The failure to hold Trump accountable is a failure with many authors. (from above)
Starting at the top- with Biden and Garland and working on down to the lowest media pundit and republican politician. Yet, there is no doubt the ultimate failure rests with the voters who chose Trump.
Not enough is said that people freely chose Trump. As Pogo said: we have met the enemy and he is us.
What do you think Biden should have done? He’s not a US Attorney. Or a judge. And he said he wasn’t going to tell DOJ what to do.
POTUS could have been out there shaping the narrative. He could have been doing some ‘world building’, leading the narrative with timed, thoughtful and emotive language shifting media and public discourse to the legal realm. Specifically, guiding public understanding of the unfolding legal process, the real world consequences and addressing what we all saw with our eyes.
POTUS could have been out in front of the discourse, exposing himself in all his humanity, love of country and agedness. POTUS could have been doing that while saying hey, this why it’s so important to me to have run in 2020 and it’s so important that I am a transitional president (one term). Positioning himself as an intentional one term president while drawing dramatic focus to the importance of the legal process surrounding Trump would have captured public attention, made him look stronger (think motivated serious Biden speak) *and* given himself a stronger frame to draw attention to his transitional economic accomplishments. There are many add-on benefits to that strong centering of the narrative.
For what it’s worth, imho Biden is the best president most people in the US will probably ever know. Shame on he and his team for not standing tall at the world’s biggest mic. I feel terrible writing that, I’d have a drink with him at the drop of a dime, but let shame fall so people can center themselves appropriately.
Exactly! (I don’t think Marcy will be surprised to learn I aced her test.)
Get your act together, lefty pundits! It’s going to be a long haul.
Kudos to YOU, SL! :-) I forgot Roman.
It’s increasingly difficult for me to read or even think about any of this without getting up every five minutes to suddenly just have to do something…anything…I’ve been putting off for a very loooong time.
So THANKS to Marcy and You and Everyone here who still do keep up on it all.
agita; noun https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agita
Or at least learn to just use a frikkin’ search engine. The Great Goggly Moggly took less than two seconds to come up with an annotated version of the October 2024 immunity brief with the names of all the criminal and personal co-conspirators.
I couldn’t have come up with Bannon and Roman just off the top of my head, but damme if I wouldn’t at least look it up!
Marcy, is there any chance to support an alt-media consortium where you and others who do go after truth can coalesce? So many of us have quit corporate media. I believe we could fund it ourselves and build a truth machine that would get attention to help turn this tide.
I have used your information to push back wherever I have heard the mal-information on the Special Counsel and etc. But I don’t have much influence outside my narrow channel.
Wow…I’ve been thinking about that word “consortium” since Rayne wrote her most recent post. Thanks for putting that out there!
Might there be some billionaire[s] willing to fund something like this [without having editorial input]?
Harpie, I did put this on Rayne’s thread, but I know it is worth repeating. I will gladly donate my protest earnings from Soros, whenever I get that check!
But seriously, I think this is a crowdfunding opportunity.
Sorry, I did miss that, bgThenNow. I’ll see you there!
On BlueSky, Mark Cuban is dropping hints that he might qualify.
I have been hoping for this to happen. We need a consortium of well-funded political truth available to the public.
Absolutely agree – thank you so much for the work you do.
Aggressively pursuing a story in the manner of Seymour Hersh or Woodward and Bernstein doesn’t happen anymore. Sometimes a few selected leaks to the right reporters are needed to get the story out or keep it on the front pages. As with Judith Miller being played by Dick Cheney leading up to the Iraq war or the FBI leaks about Hillary’s e-mails with an assist from Jim Comey. Think of it like wrestling, the Democrats play by college wrestling rules while the Republicans imitate the WWE, which is one reason we are in the state we are in.
it’s even worse, the Repubs have graduated into MMA, which is much less of a show that WWE and is no-holds barred! The gap is so pathetic.
For journalists, the ignorance is perhaps just negligence; but for others, it seems intentional. That great Louis Armstrong number, “Wonderful World”, has a line that celebrates this: “I hear babies cry, I watch them grow; they’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know”. So many people today don’t want that to happen –don’t want humans to learn and grow, to be better than their forebears. MAGAs; fundamentalists of all “faiths”; even my one relative who to this day feels that the Latin Mass should be brought back. I went to a college whose seal stated, “I make free men from children with books and a balance”. As Marcy points out here, one must read, and study, thoroughly and carefully, to learn and grow. The journalists have certainly failed us here.
you’re a Johnnie? me 2
Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque
An apology from lefty pundits is that legal briefs are hard to read. They are documents by professionals for other professionals within a profession. Lefty pundits don’t understand how claims and evidence work in legal briefs. It’s harder for the lay public. Many legal journalists won’t even read them, because it takes work. Maybe you are right to expect everyone to read emptywheel every day. Maybe they do, and they just don’t want to cite you. Maybe your writing is challenging, being one step removed from legal briefs, and also within a growing field of reference with a very large number of malefactors and events. Your writing has all of Orwell’s virtues, those in his great essay on how to write in “Politics and the English Language”, so I am not complaining or criticizing, but to convey a fact-set to a general audience , there has to be an 8th-10th grade level method, NY Times level.
There is too much cognitive work involved for a reader to digest this or that claim and its evidence, the quality of the evidence in the stream of reporting in its emergent flow here. Nobody else has covered Jan 6 and the documents case in any detail, comparatively. Nobody has wanted to invest the attention, like studying for a test, to understand what happened with the Jan 6 investigation. You get the A+ making uncontested journalistic turf, and it’s not digested anywhere else. I know it’s not your intention to make record like Thucydides, to record the history, for future historians who are probably going to be as lazy as present journalists, but to have an impact by “informing the people”. If you were given an intern by Propublica or TPM maybe one of those outfits could spin off your reporting. As far as the 2nd Trump Presidency, it’s water under the bridge, and it’s carrying the bridge away with it.
317 words. You’re backsliding. Work on your concision or you’re going back into auto-mod.
Which is one of the things the left AND JOURNALISTS should be doing: read the sources, distill them, and present it in concise language for the public.
In the case of journalists, it’s as if they’ve forgotten the bare essentials. Report who, what, where, when, how, and why, which can only be done correctly if the sources are read. It’s ridiculous that Marcy gives them a cheat sheet and they still can’t fucking do it.
Particularly ridiculous considering that all co-conspirators are listed in the first few pages of that brief. It’s not *even* in the jargon-heavy, footnote-heavy, “professionals for professionals” part of the writing. Any “lefty-pundit” who couldn’t manage it deserves an automatic demotion to “some rando on the internet”, IMO.
I don’t find “legal briefs” (a broad generality!) hard to read. The good ones you can breeze through; the bad ones engage your critical faculties. The thing that makes them accessible: familiarity with the context. Know a little something about the case. Read opposing briefs, judges’ rulings, local journalism. It not only gets easier, it gets FUN.
A lot of things are water under the bridge. Your upbeat assessment aside, two of the most often-read legal commentators, Marcy and Brookings’ Benjamin Wittes, are not qualified lawyers. They are experienced legal analysts and investigative reporters.
As Rayne points out, their job involves understanding the original documents and their context, and making their import digestible to reasonably capable readers. As Marcy points out, big media employ similar people, most of whom are considerably less capable at it than Marcy.
Who are the lefty pundits you have in mind? What kind of pull can they have in a party that thrives in constantly disciplining it’s left? Establishment Dems have been crying fascism for close to a decade now and the institutions they champion pussyfooted yet again during “the most important election of our lives.”™
You’re assuming “Establishment Dems” — who are these folks you have in mind, btw, since you insist on names — actually know how to deal with fascists who are also members of a transnational organized crime syndicate.
Welcome to emptywheel.
I’m very grateful to the work done on this blog. I’ve also become a fan of the political strategist Rachel Bittcoffer. I fully agree with Marcy‘s position and would add to that Rachel‘s basic thesis.
Her mantra is that the Maga are waging a successful war of propaganda while Democrats want to have conversations. Unfortunately, in politics, propaganda always beats communications.
What is my point? How much evidence of Scotus corruption did we need to predict that Roberts would interfere to protect Trump?
Didn’t the FBI halt their investigations into Brett Kavanagh? Didn’t Alito fly the J6 flag over his home? Didn’t Thomas accept millions of gifts and get a free ride to Russia? Didn’t scotus interfere in Bush v Gore to hand the election to Bush?
It’s crazy how the Maga will hold fast onto lies while Democrats are so quick to move on dot com.
Propaganda is crass and even frightening, but it works. That is not a value judgement. It’s a factual statement. The intricate details of the legal matter may be important in a court of law, but in politics, if you are explaining you are losing.
All we needed, in my unprofessional opinion, was a constant chorus of “SCOTUS has been corrupted by billionaires and they’re going to do everything they can to elect Trump for the billionaire class.”
It’s simple. It’s emotional. It provides a “scapegoat”. With enough repetition, you have our counter programming. It even has the added benefit of being true.
Instead we got “trust the process?”
Of course I believe that truth still matters, otherwise I would not hurt my brain trying to keep up here.
I’m just saying that no lefty pundit is off the hook for not being on message. That’s just Lucy pulling away the football from Charlie Brown.
One potential area of disagreement I have is that I believe that this level of messaging must come from the top. The power of the MAGA movement stems from one leader asserting “truth” aggressively and repeatedly. It gives pressure and permission for all others to do the same.
Biden chose norms, and now he looks complicit in the lie. That messaging vacuum gave rise to the conspiracies against Garland.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. You attempted to publish this comment as “Michael C” triggering auto-moderation; it has been edited to reflect your established username. Please check your browser’s cache and autofill; future comments may not publish if username does not match. /~Rayne]
Like good intentions, the roads to hell are paved with unprofessional opinions.
I read a number of Drezner’s posts. I haven’t read him before, I won’t again; I didn’t find it impressive, especially compared with his resume. He does point out he’s nothing more than a “VERY INTERESTED AMATEUR (Some knowledge and/or experience and staying on top of latest developments): in electoral politics, and I’d say the post you cited is Exhibit A.
[delurk] Speaking of “… a slew of people … not holding Trump accountable”, a name conspicuously missing so far is that of a certain former Speaker of the House who, for no declared substantial reason, single-handedly spiked an impeachment investigation into a scandal now derisively called “Russiagate” (if mentioned at all).
Had she followed through on her clear duty, the problems Jack Smith investigated might never have arisen at all. [relurk]
Who wants to contribute to a charity of choice in order to see Marcy edify Paul Campos regarding the DoJ investigation/prosecution?
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the same username and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. Write your username down some place convenient. It’s not a password but without it the system won’t recognize who you are. /~Rayne]
Thanks very much, will do
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. You attempted to publish this comment as “Cornell 1977” triggering auto-moderation — spaces, punctuation, letter case matter. It has been edited to reflect your established username. Please check your browser’s cache and autofill; future comments may not publish if username does not match. /~Rayne]
I realize the list of 7 points in the post is about those failing to hold Trump to account, but it is an absolutely wild category error to place Trump on that list at anywhere other than the top, in the first instance. Unless we’re blaming Garland and masking lefty pundits’ role.