Top Democrats are joining forces to attempt to legally remove a prohibition on TV coverage of trials in certain U.S. courts, citing the necessity and importance of full transparency and exposure during the imminent (and unprecedented) trials of the U.S. v. Donald J. Trump, the former president.
Chief MAGA antagonist Adam Schiff, a lawyer and U.S. Representative from California, is seeking signatures to change the no-TV protocol, allowing the Trump trial proceedings to “be broadcast for the public.”
Schiff writes that “if the American people are to accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for them to witness, as directly as possible, the full facts and evidence.”
Transparency will be crucial in the trials of the U.S. v. Donald J. Trump.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) August 4, 2023
It’s why dozens of my colleagues joined me today in urging that these proceedings be broadcast for the public.
If the American people are to accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for them to… pic.twitter.com/xYY2xuooYd
Ironically, perhaps, the move would all but guarantee Trump something he has always coveted and long boasted about: a turn at #1 in the TV ratings.
High TV ratings are a metric Trump has bragged about even during press conferences concerning the Coronavirus pandemic, at which time he once tweeted:
“Because the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc. are so high, ‘Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers’ according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. ‘Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.’ said one lunatic.”
Donald Trump
Because the “Ratings” of my News Conferences etc. are so high, “Bachelor finale, Monday Night Football type numbers” according to the @nytimes, the Lamestream Media is going CRAZY. “Trump is reaching too many people, we must stop him.” said one lunatic. See you at 5:00 P.M.!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2020
Trump was responding to a sentence in the Times — addressing concerns about the President’s potential to distribute misinformation — that read: “President Trump is a ratings hit, and some journalists and public health experts say that could be a dangerous thing.”
More recently Trump boasted about the ratings of his CNN Townhall, which may have contributed to CNN’s boss being dismissed, with the former President posting after its airing that CNN got “Sky High Ratings that they haven’t seen in a very long time. It was by far the biggest Show of the night, the week, and the month!”
Donald Trump may not have won the 2020 presidential election, but he has continued to win the #1 ratings spot in the attention economy — a lead that has only increased as the criminal charges against him continue to mount.
Trump receives — and it’s not even close — more news coverage than any other figure in Western media, including the current President, Taylor Swift and LeBron James. Trump’s exceptional media saturation is an ongoing experiment poised to test the cynical adage that “all publicity is good publicity.”
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