Donald Trump, Criminal Defendant

This criminal trial is unprecedented. And it will only really matter if a wider population grasps its seriousness. That's up to the media and all of us.

Criminal defendant Trump attends a criminal court hearing last month in Manhattan. ((Photo by Curtis Means-Pool via Getty Images)

When Richard Nixon died on Friday April 22, 1994, his obituaries made clear in their headlines which of his actions secured his place in history. The New York Times referred to “A Master of Politics Undone by Watergate.” The Washington Post noted that Nixon was the “Only Chief Executive Forced From Office.”

Here’s how each paper described it in their obituary’s opening sentence:

The New York Times: Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, who was the only President in more than two centuries of American history to resign from office, died last night at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.

The Washington Post: Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States—a polarizing figure who won a record landslide and resigned in disgrace 21 months later—died last night in a New York City hospital four days after suffering a stroke.

Watergate. Resigned in disgrace. Forced from office. The words were careful, but the reality was obvious and unavoidable. Journalists and the public understood it. The responsibility to acknowledge and establish his dark place in history was clear.

Then, of course, there was someone like Rolling Stone writer Hunter S. Thompson, unencumbered by the traditional journalistic expectation to remain cool and detached. Here’s how he described the end of Nixon, his frequent target, a week after the news broke:

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing—a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

It’s the kind of description that makes me sorely miss Thompson’s rapier wit in the criminal era of Donald Trump.

Today, April 15, 2024, one week shy of the 30th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s death, is the first day of the first criminal trial of Donald John Trump. In fact, it’s the first day of the first criminal prosecution of any U.S. president in our nation’s history.

April 15 is a miserable day for many Americans since it happens to be the day that taxes are due. But one can only hope it’s a particularly miserable day for the criminal defendant who has dragged Americans through his dirty, ongoing spree of criminality.

None of us know exactly what will be the outcome of this trial in a Manhattan criminal courtroom, a poetic location for the real estate developer from Queens who always dreamed of being accepted by Manhattan’s elite—and largely failed to do so. Most Manhattanites rejected him over the years, with nearly nine out of ten voting against him in 2016 and 2020; those who witnessed him at close range understood his low caliber and how unfit he is to be anywhere near the levers of power.

We should all hope that the courtroom proceedings in the weeks ahead will help more Americans understand the unfitness of this man to ever again be near the White House and the nation’s highest office.

In addition to polls during the primary, a Politico Magazine/Ipsos poll last month found that 36 percent of Independents, 9 percent of Republicans and 32 percent of all respondents said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he is convicted. That remains to be seen, especially as voters typically return to their party’s nominee by election-time, even if they opposed him during the run-up.

But the media in general and political reporters in particular will play a critical role in helping Americans to grasp both the legal nuances of the trial and how the defendant is trying to exploit the proceedings politically to evade justice. This doesn’t end when the trial ends: Much like the obituaries of Nixon, political journalists should be noting in the opening sentences of all their stories that Donald Trump is a criminal defendant—and is the first former president to be criminally prosecuted.

We have seen too many examples of reporters slipping into the usual pattern of treating the two candidates from the two major parties as competitors in a political horse race for the presidency. As if there are two major parties committed to our democratic system of government. As if there are two candidates who are participating in the basic principals of American society, such as supporting the rule of law and accepting factual reality.

In the coming days, we can expect the story of The People of New York vs. Donald J. Trump to lead the news cycle. But it cannot end there, no matter whether he is convicted in this case of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments that would influence the 2016 election—or any of the other criminal cases that could still come to trial before November.

We should also expect and demand that our media takes seriously their duty to plainly tell the truth, a responsibility that has never seemed more solemn or critical, if we believe in the survival of democracy and the rule of law.

(For Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, that truth is straightforward: “We cannot allow New York businesses to manipulate their records to cover up criminal conduct,” he said last April in announcing the case. “We today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.”)

Not every reporter need be a Hunter S. Thompson, noting after Nixon’s death and when he was alive that Nixon was a “dangerous enemy” and a liar and backstabber to his friends who even “betrayed the trust of his family.” But they should be capable of stating the facts that are painfully evident to everyone except the cult followers who have abandoned knowable reality in their commitment to Trump and are happily egging on both hell and high water.

The overarching facts are clear: Donald Trump is a criminal defendant, the first former president to be criminally prosecuted. Before too long, he could also be the first former president to be criminally convicted.

But that outcome will only really matter if an expanded population both grasps how far beyond the bounds of decency and a healthy functioning society that is, as well as acts on their understanding of what a grave error it would be to vote such a man back into power. We can be sure that the GOP, which supports Trump’s lie of political persecution and makes a mockery of itself by consolidating around a possible convicted felon, will make breaking through the madness all the more difficult.

It’s up to all of us who are narrating these strange and dangerous times to tell the truth about how and why this is an unprecedented moment in our country. Failing to do so may mean that this moment of chaos and crime will become our collective future for years to come. Each of us can help prove in November that this outcome was not inevitable.

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