'Ratings aren't worth our democracy': Legal experts trash latest Trump interview
Donald Trump's rail-roading interview with "Meet the Press" might be earning both sides criticism, but the former president prompted legal analysts to turn their analytical minds to wonder.
As Neal Katyal and Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC on Sunday morning, Trump basically killed his only legal argument in less than 90 seconds.
Weissmann, in particular, pointed to another point Trump made about demanding that the votes stop being counted so he could win.
"He just said it on air to NBC, stop counting the votes. Well, that's not allowed," he said.
"Other than the occasional fatal admission, with respect to his criminal cases, there is no public interest in putting this man on television. The lies and distortions are nearly constant. Media who give him a platform are failing the public," said Herman F. Selvin Professor of Law at UC Berkeley Jonah B. Gelbach.
George Conway described the interview as being akin to interviewing Hitler and asking how he felt about prison.
"Herr Hitler, when you look back at the Putsch, and those quiet days you spent at Landsberg Prison writing your best-selling book, how does it make you feel?" he said.
Civil Rights lawyer Andrew C. Laufer pointed out a rhetoric expert, Professor Jennifer Mercieca, who explained that the way that Kristen Welker held the interview had no hope of ever being able to adequately fact-check the president.
Lawyer Adam Cohen agreed with the attacks on the interview itself, saying of reporters like Welker, "They never learn. In 2016, even when Trump outed himself as a racist and misogynist the media covered him incessantly. Now, even as Trump currently pursued a coup, CNN gave him a town hall and NBC puts him on TV. Meet the Press was better with Chuck Todd instead of Kristen Welker."
Harvard's professor of constitutional law, Laurence Tribe, also pointed out that Trump destroyed the defense he'd been using for the past several months.
"Trump just threw his whole 'following my lawyers’ advice' defense under the bus," Tribe posted on social media. "No, let me correct that: not just under the bus but under a roaring, speeding, ginormous freight train." He followed the comment with several train emojis.
Noah Bookbinder, director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, agreed with Tribe that the defense has been completely demolished.
"I never thought the advice of counsel defense was a winner, but Donald Trump now seems to have foreclosed it entirely," he wrote.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) has long been a Trump critic, but after the "Meet the Press" interview, he pointed his ire at the show.
"Allowing Trump to lie on MTP and leaving 'fact checking' to the website is not how we should be treating a man who launched an insurrection," he wrote. "It’s 2023, we should have learned this lesson over 7 years. Ratings aren’t worth our democracy."