It’s these little joys that make covering our American political hellscape occasionally tolerable. Writing here for DAME is one of those joys, too. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be published in a women-led outlet that has long refused to treat Trump the candidate, Trump the president, and Trump the desperate, bumbling and blathering man on trial(s) as anything other than what he is: a fascist, a bigot, a grifter, a liar, a puppet, and an outright threat to our country and to our communities.
Now, even mainstream and legacy journalists can call him something else, something they know he is as well as anyone else does: a criminal. But calling Trump a criminal is only a small part of the solution to a nearly decade-long problem with the political press’s coverage of the man.
For a long time, I and other left-leaning media critics have been fixated on semantics: lamenting that Trump’s lies are rarely called out as such, or that his behavior—unabashedly racist, xenophobic, bigoted—is rarely named as such in the mainstream and legacy press.
But semantics are the symptom, not the disease.
Whatever the mainstream and legacy press has called Trump, they have rarely, and certainly not consistently, covered the man as the lying, grifting, bigot he is. Some, such as New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn, have been more honest than others about hiding their rank cowardice behind poor editorial judgment. Trump’s abuser politics depend on this fear. His continued success is built on the media’s terror at the prospect of being accused of “bias” if it dares describe his words and actions in plain language. His career is predicated on saying and doing things so outlandish, cruel, and incredible that the mere act of naming them makes his observers wonder if they are making it all up, and his winking supporters act as if it’s all just a show.
Trump’s been defeated in courts of law before; in fact, he often loses in courts of law, with little negative effect on his public reputation. That’s his whole thing, really. But 34 guilty verdicts from a jury of his fellow New Yorkers will be hard to spin. To finally expect to see the words “convicted” and “criminal” and “felon” coming down the hopper is satisfying, but also deflating. Because, look: Did we ever really need those words? When the facts underlying them have always been right in front of us?
Facts matter in journalism. I respect that; I have to, and I want to, and I’ll say it even though I hope it goes without saying. I know we couldn’t always technically call the guy a criminal, even when the vibes (and the civil courts) said otherwise. But the vibes are, I hope, finally out the window when it comes to this one, very important thing: Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee for the White House in 2024, is a convicted felon 34 times over according to a hometown jury. He’s not “embattled.” He’s not just a controversial guy without a filter who speaks his mind, or even a right-wing firebrand playing to a base hungry for red, red meat. He’s not playing four-dimensional chess as a master negotiator, and he’s not just another crafty politician gaming the system. He’s not a victim. He’s a perpetrator.
Donald Trump is a criminal.
I would settle for him being tasked with converting the “cactus garden” that separates Guantanamo Bay from the rest of Cuba, into a golf course for the solders to use.
Apparently there are still some land mines left by the Cuban government in this area. The US claims that they removed the ones place by them, but we don’t know for sure.
So in summary, Trump can run for president, despite having been convicted of 34 charges around election fraud. He won’t be able to vote for himself if he’s actually in prison, but he can take office, sell the US nuclear launch codes to Putin for $1,000,000,000, pardon himself, and walk free on day 2.
Excellent!
A president can’t pardon state convictions 
That’s alright then.
And it’s far from settled law that a president can pardon themselves at all. I would suggest the default position would be
It’s high time the constitution was amended to make felons ineligible to run for federal office and codify that presidents cannot pardon themselves. These seem like no-brainer provisions but there’s a lot of brainless people in Congress.
So felons, like, oh, MLK shouldn’t be able to run?
Also think about how an amendment like that would be used by MAGA.
Maybe not the only thing, but that’s just wishful thinking.
I’m personally fine with felons being able to run for office on principal. It’s an elected position, and if the electorate decide they want this person to represent them, then that’s their choice. I don’t want this particular felon to run for federal office but that was also true when he wasn’t a felon either.
As far as presidents being able to pardon themselves? I 100% agree this shouldn’t be allowed. The pardon power today is pretty much limitless for federal crimes, but being able to pardon yourself seems like a perversion to a degree that the framers probably didn’t think to explicitly call this out because of how ridiculous it must have seeemed.
I wonder how insane both Colbert and Meyers are going right now since they’re both off this week. I can’t wait till they’re back on the air!
I have not had a chance to listen to this yet, but here is the local public radio political reporters discussing this case and if it might have an impact on the Fulton Co case…
Sam Gringlas pops up on the national show from time to time!
Teflon Don’s armor has been pierced. If nothing else, “an ex-president has never been convicted” is burned as an excuse to do nothing. Hopefully that should impact all his other cases.
