I watched. All morning. Trump showed up at the courthouse looking grim. The indictments were handed down. The case was pushed to December. Morning turns to mid-afternoon and I grab a nap. 

Waking up is always a blur. I’m bleary-eyed and I don’t understand the simplest of things. I turn on CNN. I hear some stuff, but I’m not sure what to make of it. After ten minutes or so of this, someone comes into focus. 

She’s golden and stands out against the darkness. It seems night has fallen in New York City. Trump Force One has already landed in West Palm Beach. It’s 8:03 PM ET. As usual, I’m right on top of my day. 

It’s Trump’s coronavirus briefing antagonist Paula Reid, the former CBS White House correspondent who has now, inexplicably, ended up on the Cable News Network. But what is she saying? 

“I’ve read through this indictment, Anderson. And he’s being charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. And in order to charge these as a felony in New York state, you have to prove that these records were falsified in furtherance of another crime. And it’s not clear exactly what that larger crime is because it’s not charged here. Now if prosecutors want to argue that these documents were falsified in furtherance of something that is a federal election law violation, that’s shaky legal ground. I mean, that’s an untested legal theory.”

Anderson Cooper’s expression hasn’t changed since birth. Nothing to see there. 

“Look,” Reid goes on, “This is one of the most historic cases, arguably the most significant case right now in the American court system. It appears to be built on a pretty shaky foundation because it’s not clear what the larger crime is.” 

Admittedly, I’d missed much of the afternoon’s analysis catching up on my sleep. But now I’m thinking that Paula Reid is clearly on her way to FOX News. Nevertheless, it was stunning, while it lasted, to hear someone on CNN actually disparaging this long dreamt of, long awaited, and now finally realized criminal indictment of Donald J. Trump. 

Now would have been the time for popcorn because, surely, the proven mercenary Ms. Reid was about to be eviscerated by the panel. It doesn’t matter who is on the panel. It’s CNN. 

Elie Honig, Former Asst. U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York, speaks: 

“The only way that each of these [34 misdemeanor] counts gets bumped up to a felony, is if you can show that they falsified the records to commit some second crime. And here is where we’re going to run into legal problems. Because the indictment does not say what that second crime is, which is completely inexplicable to me.” 

Next up is Van Jones. And in a comment that seems like what you might expect to hear in one of CNN’s pre-broadcast brainstorming sessions, Jones admits some weaknesses with the charges brought against Trump but then stands up for Bragg and in opposition to the tide that is turning against the Manhattan prosecutor on this early evening of Indictment Day. 

“I had hoped that there would be more in the indictment. And I think that because it is SO thin, it’s giving aid and comfort to some of the worst people in American politics, a rogues gallery. To the extent that you do have a prosecutor who believes in the rule of law and who also thinks that our elections shouldn’t be polluted with lies and hush money and false statements and he’s trying to take a stand, I think that we need to be at least as supportive of Alvin Bragg, at this stage, as this rogues gallery is of Donald Trump.”

Anderson Cooper asks another former federal prosecutor from the Southern District of NY, Jessica Roth, what she thinks of the case.    

“I was disappointed that there wasn’t more in the indictment in terms of laying out the legal theory with more precision. Today was supposed to be the big reveal when we would get that information. To the extent that we would have a sense of what the theory of the case is in terms of what are the crimes that would have been furthered or concealed by the falsification of records, it’s not in the indictment.”

I don’t understand what I’m hearing. I’m even wondering whether I ever actually woke up from my afternoon nap and if this isn’t all some sort of crazy dream. So at this point, I can’t take it any more and reach for the remote to fast forward. But then, at that very moment, at 8:13 ET, CNN switched away from Anderson Cooper to an entirely different panel, this one hosted by Jake Tapper. In the courtroom of public opinion, surely order was about to be restored. 

Around the table are CNN’s political A-Team: John King, Dana Bash, Abby Phillip, and Jamie Gangel. Joining them is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Reporters and federal prosecutors are professionals who deal every day in message discipline. But compared to deputy directors of the FBI, they are surely amateurs.

“If I had to characterize it,” McCabe says, “It’s a disappointment. I think everyone was hoping we would see more about the direction that they intend to take this prosecution. What is the legal theory that ties this very solid misdemeanor case, 34 counts of misdemeanors, to the intent to conceal another crime which is what makes it a felony. It simply isn’t there.”

The talking heads on screen are smaller images. The larger shot is of the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach where Trump is getting ready to speak. I have to say, I’ve never really seen much from inside Trump’s fabled Florida compound, and I’m impressed. The ballroom is glorious. Over the top? Compared to what? The White House? The interiors of the US Capitol? Anything at all in Europe? I don’t think so. I like big beautiful ornate spaces and I’m not going to fault those who create them. 

The room is filled with a certain kind of American elite. Sassy. Proud. Out front about who they are. I don’t believe they’re particularly representative of the Republican Party. They’re certainly not representative of the Democratic Party. But they are familiar to me. I’m an American. I’ve rolled my eyes at people like these my entire life. But I don’t hate them. And I don’t believe they’re trying to destroy America.

CNN is a television network that seems to be dying a slow painful death. Nothing on the landscape of culture or politics would appear to be able to save them from drifting even further off into the irrelevance that characterizes their current presence on the media and information landscape. But there is one thing that could save CNN, or at least slow its decline for the rest of this decade, and that would be a second Trump administration. 

The vibe in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom is festive. CNN’s Kristen Holmes describes it as having the feel of a rally, with “quite a who’s who of Trump world” in attendance. Someone who I’ve lost track of on CNN even suggested earlier that this speech and this event, not Trump’s earlier announcement of his candidacy, will be seen and remembered as the true kickoff to his 2024 presidential campaign. 

The staging is perfect. The American flags are appropriately placed. CNN itself as well as some very qualified talking heads under their employ has swatted away the charges in New York on behalf of the former president and has delivered a moment so rare in a public official’s life that any politician seeking high office could only have dreamed of such events unfolding as they had when their heads hit their Mike Lindell pillows at night. The only thing we were waiting on was the man himself, The Former Guy, who, having earlier been indicted in New York and having only landed an hour earlier, was, understandably and excusably, slow to seize his big moment. 

The whole world was watching and CNN was ready to broadcast a most incredible and unlikely political rebirthing of Donald Trump. 

Finally, he enters the room. I’ve noticed so many of late in both the mainstream media but especially the alternative press describing Trump as a master politician, albeit inarguably a pure demagogue, ready to chew up and spit out any and all challengers. I can’t agree or disagree. I just don’t know. But as Trump worked the crowd of those lined up to shake his hand in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom after being indicted mere hours earlier and a thousand miles away he certainly seemed an unstoppable political force and the literal master of all he surveyed. 

The truth is that the indictment by the New York DA was a dangerous and obviously politically motivated endeavor. And it backfired immediately. The verdict on the merits of the case as the judgment came down from the most establishment of neo-liberal Democratic Party friendly networks was a scathing rebuke. The stage was set for the master politician to step into the spotlight and take this easy win that had been handed to him on a silver platter by none other than his worst enemies. It was going to be so easy. But then what did Donald Trump do? What did the master politician do with this most incredibly fortuitous opportunity ever presented to him in his short but checkered political career?

Yep. He shit all over it. 

How easy would it have been for Trump to maximize the political victory this day had unexpectedly provided to him. He would have needed some help. If not maybe the ‘best’ people, if he’d at least had competent awake and aware handlers watching the talking heads on CNN’s fileting of Alvin Bragg’s 34 count indictment who might have transcribed just a few of the high points, as I did here in this piece, Trump could have then simply walked out onto his magnificent stage and said, “You know folks, I’m not going to speak about what happened today. I’m not going to give my opinion of the events of the day. I’m going to hold my tongue for another time. But what I’m going to do is read to you right now what was just said on CNN in the last half hour.” 

And then Trump could have read to his guests at Mar-a-Lago and to the world everything that was said on CNN about the case against him that I’ve included here in this piece, with attributions. And then when he was done, he could have taken the transcripts and held them delicately between two fingers as if they were filthy dirty things and then he could have simply opened his fingers and let the papers, along with the international reputations of the indictments handed down against him in New York as well as that of the Manhattan D.A. who brought those indictments, all drop silently and harmlessly to the floor.

Instead, an obviously exhausted, visibly deflated, but still toxically defiant Trump tiredly read an even more tired meandering poorly written and poorly conceived of speech off the teleprompter, choosing not to speak off the cuff and without a script, ironically committing the very same misstep every one of his primary opponents committed against him in 2016 that allowed him to bluster and brag his way to the Republican nomination. 

Trump attacked both the prosecutor in New York and the judge, as well as wives and daughters. It was an ugly, and worse, a boring performance by someone who didn’t have the political instincts nor the good sense to understand the incredible political power of what had just happened to him. Trump seems to be a person who has never learned to take yes for an answer. And if he couldn’t see this moment for what it so obviously was, so obvious that even his most fervent antagonists on CNN had to repeatedly admit it on air, and take advantage of the moment, how could he ever be expected to make sound nuanced and clever decisions in the Oval Office as President of the United States?

After 20 minutes or so of this, CNN cut away from Trump’s speech and back to their panel of talking heads. They too seemed deflated at this point. After setting Trump up for an historic banner moment, the former president provided the failing news network with only devastatingly boring television. 

What happened at Mar-a-Lago on the evening of Indictment Day explained a lot. But it didn’t explain everything. After CNN rescued its viewers from the tired toxic mess that was happening in Florida, it was fittingly Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump’s own former WH Director of Communications, who offered up maybe the most intriguing thought of the entire Trump era.

What if 2016 was a fluke?