Författare: Karrin Vasby Anderson Professor of Communication Studies Col

The first week of testimony is winding down in former President Donald Trump’s trial in New York City on charges that he falsified business records to cover up hush money payments to an adult film star, in an effort to avoid reporting the payments as campaign-related spending.

In a discussion that quickly shifted to topics well outside the courtroom itself, The Conversation U.S. spoke with Tim Bakken, a former New York prosecutor and now a legal scholar teaching at West Point, and Karrin Vasby Anderson, a scholar of political communication at Colorado State University, about the week’s events.

Their focus this week was on how Trump and other politicians interact with the U.S. media, and how their interactions relate to democracy itself.

Trump’s approach to the media

Anderson: Testimony in the case so far has indicated that Donald Trump thinks that an appropriate way to control or shape the news cycle is to pay off media professionals. That’s a departure from what politicians typically do, which is to hire media strategists who help them shape their message and their political platform in ways that garner favorable media coverage.

Trump’s approach is much more transactional. When he was president, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that he took the “unprecedented move” of revoking press passes from members of the White House press corps who covered him unfavorably.

And some journalists appear to be taking cues from Trump.

Earlier this week, in a Truth Social post, Trump attributed the following quotation to Fox News host Jesse Watters: “They are catching undercover Liberal Activists lying to the Judge in order to get on the Trump jury.” The New York Times found that Trump embellished the quote: The words “in order to get on the Trump Jury” were not in Watters’ initial report.

It’s not surprising that Trump embellished or changed a quotation. What’s really staggering is that after the fact, Watters posted on X the exact statement Trump had made, which was not what Watters had said on air. Essentially, Watters was allowing Trump to be his editor in his coverage and characterization of this case.

Regardless of how the court decides, I think the average American should be concerned that Trump approaches the free press from a transactional perspective. Trump looks to who he can pay off or threaten or intimidate so they will tell the story he wants.

Trump’s reaction to criticism

Bakken: Trump is saying that the media engages in the same kinds of distortions that he engages in when he says, more loudly, things that verge on falsehoods or are falsehoods.

Uri Berliner, a former editor for NPR, essentially raised the same allegations in a recent online column, concluding that NPR’s coverage is swayed by the personal identities and characteristics of its journalists. In essence, according to Berliner, NPR may distort reality, though in a more subtle way than Trump, by virtue of the journalists it hires, the sources who are quoted by the journalists and the stories the editors decide to cover, to the disadvantage of Trump.

Trump seems to be responding to what he perceives as the media, including NPR and The Washington Post, calling him names, such as “authoritarian,” including by characterizing his speech as action.

As a candidate and as a criminal defendant, Trump can point to verifiable facts that signal possible unfairness. For instance, he’s being tried by a jury selected in a jurisdiction where Democrats outnumber Republicans 9 to 1. And the piece about NPR said 87 NPR editors are registered members of the Democratic party and none are Republicans – though at least some are not members of either party.

Maybe he’s saying it’s as great a threat to democracy to be singled out by the democratic institutions – which are supposed to be seeing both sides – because he’s a dissenter or a communicator who is different from other people.

Anderson: The concern that I’m raising with the Jesse Watters case is not that it was friendly towards Trump. It’s that Watters changed his reporting to fit Trump’s narrative after Trump misquoted him.

Trump tweeted something that was a lie: He said “Jesse Watters said ‘XYZ’” and Watters didn’t – Trump added to Watters’ words. That was going to be a problem for Trump because he would have been caught misquoting Watters. So Watters fixed that by going back and matching Trump’s words.

The bottom line is that Trump has shown a willingness in the course of a campaign and presidency to influence the press in ways that other politicians have not.

Trying to get the media to give you a friendly news framing is politics as usual. Paying people with secret deals, or by intimidating or punishing journalists, that’s an entirely different thing. Regardless of whether Trump is convicted of a crime this time around, I do believe that this case is illustrative of his relationship with the media and how he thinks about it differently than other people who’ve been president of the United States.

Donald Trump speaks to the media briefly upon his arrival at court on April 25, 2024.
Jefferson Siegel/The New York Times via AP, Pool

Fighting back

Bakken: In 1996 I ran as a Democratic candidate for Congress in my home district in Wisconsin. I lost in the primary.

I have some experience in trying to convince somebody in the media to write a favorable article by giving a reporter information.

I don’t see how treating a friendly reporter more favorably than you treat an unfriendly reporter is any different. You’re advantaging a journalist who shares your point of view and disadvantaging a journalist who does not share your point of view.

Through deciding what stories to publish, NPR might be doing the same thing that Fox News is doing, except that we didn’t know it until Berliner spoke up. Both internally and publicly, NPR has rejected Berliner’s criticism, but its listeners may have had concerns. Since 2020, the number of weekly NPR listeners plunged from 60 million to 42 million in March 2024, according to The New York Times.

It seems to me that Trump is fighting back against the press in a way that’s more aggressive than other people’s, but he feels that is his only approach. A lot of people align with him because they feel that disconnection from what they believe are institutions that are no longer fair.

A difference from the past

Anderson: My job as I see it, as somebody who is trained in political communication, is not to stump for either side. But I do simply say: When a presidential candidate misquotes a journalist, and then later the journalist posts a second quote that confirms the candidate’s misinformation, that is dangerous, and we should be worried about it. The misquote, by the way, seems to have been influential in one of the jurors stepping down because she was getting bad feedback.

That’s not normal. It isn’t how most politicians, Republican or Democratic, have dealt with the national media prior to Trump. Läs mer…

Former President Donald Trump’s New York trial on charges related to paying hush money to an adult film star begins on April 15, 2024. The Conversation U.S. asked Tim Bakken, a former New York prosecutor and now a legal scholar teaching at West Point, and Karrin Vasby Anderson, a political communication expert at Colorado State University, to set the scene from each of their perspectives.

It will be a “monumental drama” inside and outside the courtroom, said Bakken. Anderson adds, “It’s not just what happens inside the courtroom, but how we manage it outside the courtroom, that will be equally consequential for us as a nation.”

Bakken: The scene is very dramatic: A former president is on trial, for the first time. Trump is facing relatively minor charges that are not complex, and the evidence should not require a complex presentation. But the aura surrounding the introduction of the evidence has rarely occurred in world or U.S. history. And that’s not an overstatement.

Trump has been charged with over 30 counts of filing a false document. There’s just one basic charge: that he filed a false document and enlisted other people in his organization to help him file the false document to conceal the fact that he had paid money to Stormy Daniels to urge her not to speak up about his relationship with her.

Juan M. Merchan, the judge who will preside over Donald Trump’s hush money trial.
AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Anderson: The rhetorical scene is complicated. Let’s break it into three separate scenes.

The first is sort of inside the courtroom, where there’s a modicum of moderation, particularly from Trump’s lawyers when speaking on his behalf. They speak of him as if he is like any other former U.S. president. There’s no recognition of the ways in which Trump has not conducted himself like past U.S. presidents, both in office and after leaving the White House.

The second stage is how Trump interacts with the judicial system in nonjudicial, nondemocratic ways. He’s doing a lot of communication outside of the courtroom, and that’s going to influence the way that we understand the case as it is unfolding.

One of the reasons why Trump has been subjected to a number of gag orders is because his rhetoric outside the courtroom appears to be trying to potentially intimidate jurors. If it’s not outright intimidation, then he’s openly trying to cast doubt by spreading misinformation and false information about the people who are involved in the case, including judges and their families.

The third scene is what Trump does on Truth Social, his social media platform, and at his rallies, which is what every authoritarian does: their rhetorical formula. They use their communication to destabilize democratic institutions, dehumanize opponents and scapegoat others. The institution that Trump is looking to destabilize with his pronouncements at rallies and on social media is the judiciary.

How can a judge keep control of a trial when all of this is happening?

Bakken: From what I’ve observed of Trump, once he enters a courtroom or is inside a legal proceeding, there doesn’t seem to be any issue in regard to misbehavior. He’s a practical person in that regard. But he goes just about as far as he can.

Anderson: Inside the courtroom, he and his lawyers are going to present him as a sort of normal, typical defendant, remarkable only in that he is a former president. When it is to his advantage to use democratic norms strategically, he will. But he doesn’t abide by them; he weaponizes them. What he’s really doing inside the courtroom is posing as someone who doesn’t need to have multiple gag orders applied.

Bakken: Everybody has fear in a criminal legal proceeding. You’re facing an institution that can imprison you. But the things that Trump is doing outside the courtroom, at least recently, seem to reflect his concern that he cannot control a proceeding. How does a person deal with the fear that emanates when somebody else has control over you? Some people are more meticulous and will crouch. Other people – there are few of these because the stakes are very high – will strike back. And that’s who Trump is. He’s learned throughout his life that the way he can survive is to strike back at people.

Anderson: Trump recently posted, in reference to the judge in his upcoming trial, “If this Partisan Hack wants to put me in the ‘clink’ for speaking the open and obvious TRUTH, I will gladly become a Modern Day Nelson Mandela – It will be my GREAT HONOR.”

Right there, he’s hedging his bets. He doesn’t want to go to jail. What he has to do is get ahead of that message and further destabilize the democratic norms, by saying essentially, “Well, if I get convicted, it’s not me getting convicted in a court of law. It’s me getting thrown in the clink like Nelson Mandela.”

Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom in New York.
AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Bakken: There are a lot of people who comment on the legal system and say exactly the same things that Trump does. Very few will accuse those people of being authoritarian.

I’m certainly not an advocate of Trump or the district attorney in this case – I’m trying to look at it neutrally. And in any number of controversial cases going back decades, we can see people arguing that the system is unfair.

Trump is on a larger stage, but he’s essentially saying the same things that 50 out of 100 people would say in downtown New York City, where his courtroom will be. They’ll say the system is rigged. I heard that, of course, as a prosecutor, and I continue to hear that on an almost daily basis from people when they comment about the legal system.

Anderson: Trump does play the victim and the martyr, saying the system is unjust and charges against him are politically motivated.

But an authoritarian doesn’t stop there. They flip it. So it goes seamlessly, both at rallies and in social media, from “Look at me, I’m like Nelson Mandela, they’re going to throw me in jail,” to “If you don’t want this terrible system to be exploiting you, you’ve got to elect me, I alone can fix it.” He pairs those two things. That’s one of the key indicators that this is not just victim rhetoric; it’s actually authoritarian rhetoric.

Since 2015, there’s been a dramatic uptick in attacks on judges. That’s a telltale sign that Trump is not just critiquing the system or even just playing the victim. He is flipping that to say, we need to fight back using these other means, and his supporters are hearing that message and they’re threatening judges.

Some last thoughts from each of you?

Bakken: The case will be a monumental drama not only inside the courtroom, but outside the courtroom. Whether the trial can go off the way trials have normally gone off is a real test of our country and our legal system. And if it does, then we can have some confidence that Trump’s extracurricular statements and admonitions have not affected the jurors.

Anderson: I hope that as people are paying attention to the trial, they see themselves as actors and participants in creating whatever culture is going to come out of this. It’s not just what happens inside the courtroom, but how we manage it outside the courtroom, that will be equally consequential for us as a nation. Läs mer…