Attorney Jeanine Pirro was on thin ice with President Donald Trump, who publicly turned on her as Fox News went quiet.
Salon's Sophia Tesfaye called the former Fox News host's "downfall" a "classic MAGA tale" after the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool alleged vandalism case collapsed. Facing calls for disbarment and rumors that Trump would replace her, "the former Fox News star couldn't sustain Trump's fantasy."
"The saga of the Reflecting Pool is emblematic of everything amiss in America right now, a perfect diorama of how right-wing media turns Trump’s fantasies into public reality, and then tries to quietly conceal the wreckage once the facts catch up," Tesfaye wrote. "Fox News was happy to amplify the vandalism narrative when it was useful. But once the case fell apart, the network gave it barely cursory treatment, a striking silence from an outlet that had spent weeks covering the alleged desecration of a national monument when the story served the White House."
"Pirro’s appointment as U.S. attorney represented the full realization of the MAGA media pipeline, in which performative loyalty on television is treated as the primary qualification for federal law enforcement authority," Tesfaye explained. "What she is now discovering is that a courtroom does not run on the same rules as a cable television set. At Fox, Pirro could tell her audience whatever she wanted without personal consequence. Telling a federal judge the same kind of thing carries the threat of disbarment and perjury charges, and no amount of bravado previously reserved for on-air broadcasts could change that math."
Pirro's story has reflected a pattern, Tesfaye explained.
"Predictably, the moment Pirro chose self-preservation over total subversion of the law, Trump turned on her," Tesfaye wrote.
Trump berated Pirro publicly, and on Monday met with her and Doug Burgum privately. Tesfaye argued Pirro "will likely survive this particular episode" as Trump later diverted his blame to the judge.
"The former Fox star who built a television career on never conceding a point is now the first prominent member of this administration to publicly contradict Trump’s own account of a story he has told, in increasingly baroque detail, for weeks," Tesfaye added. "It turns out that feeding Trump’s delusions is a great deal easier from behind a Fox News desk, where no one can hold you in contempt, than standing in front of a federal judge who can."