On Tuesday, Donald Trump underwent his second-ever arraignment. He’s starting to put together a playbook on how to handle them, which is good for him because he probably has more indictments on the docket. After pleading guilty, he did what he sometimes does after a daytime rally: He went to a local eatery and hobnobbed with the common folk. It’s not because he wants to hang with everyday people; it’s all a stunt. And CNN’s Jake Tapper wasn’t having it.
Jake Tapper asks the CNN control room to stop running footage of Trump visiting a Miami cafe right after his arraignment.
"I don’t need to see any more of that. He’s trying to turn it into a spectacle and into a campaign ad. That is enough of that. We’ve seen it already." pic.twitter.com/ivjTf5m2JV
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) June 13, 2023
Like many news outlets, the struggling 24-hour network showed a post-arraignment Trump visiting Versailles, an iconic restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana. It was the day before the former president’s birthday, and patrons were there to ring in the big day, as well as treat him not like an indicted crook but as a hero who could always run for office from jail.
CNN showed the visit for a bit, but once they cut away, Tapper was adamant that they not return.
“To the folks in the control room, I don’t need to see any more of that,” Tapper instructed the staff. “He’s trying to turn it into a spectacle and into a campaign ad. That is enough of that. We’ve seen it already.”
Tapper wasn’t the only one who wasn’t into abetting Trump’s “spectacle.” Over at MSNBC, Niccole Wallace said much the same thing: “We don’t need to see that anymore, we know where he is.”
Though Trump is starting to figure out how to handle being arraigned, it’s still not going well for him. He’s struggling to find a criminal attorney to represent him, thanks in part to his history of burning lawyers, but he did find a solid Plan B: He sent a real estate attorney to go on TV and mount a defense.
(Via The Daily Beast)