In one America, he cuts a diminished, humbled figure during coverage that runs from morn till night. “He seems considerably older and he seems annoyed, resigned, maybe angry,” said broadcaster Rachel Maddow after seeing Donald Trump up close in court. “He seems like a man who is miserable to be here.”
But in the other America – that of Fox News, far-right podcasts and the Make America Great Again (Maga) base – the trial of the former president over a case involving a hush-money payment to an adult film performer is playing out very differently.
Here, anger at what is seen as political persecution meets with another emotion: sublime indifference. Barely a handful of Trump supporters bother to protest each day outside the court in New York, a Democratic stronghold. The trial receives less prominence in conservative media, which prefers to devote airtime to other national news including protests on university campuses against the war in Gaza.
The divergence ensures that, with TV cameras not permitted in court, two rival narratives are forming around the first criminal trial of an ex-US president. In one telling, Trump is a philander who falsified business records to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election. In the other, he is the victim of a justice department conspiracy designed to rob the Republican nominee of victory in 2024.
Michael Steele, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, said: “The minds in those orbits are already made up. If you’re listening to [far-right podcaster] Steve Bannon, you’re not going to be convinced by any other outcome except not guilty. If you are hyperventilating over coverage that speaks to Donald Trump’s guilt, then you’re not going to be happy unless he’s found guilty.”
The trial, which began in earnest this week with prosecution and defence arguments, would already be devastating for any conventional politician. The former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified about his tabloid’s efforts to protect Trump from stories that could hurt his electoral chances using a “catch-and-kill” scheme. The capricious defendant is also awaiting a ruling on whether he will be held in contempt for violating a gag order, an offence he has been accused of 14 times.
The trial has dominated cable news networks such as CNN and MSNBC to the extent that they have faced criticism for obsessing over details such as Trump’s daily commute to court and his demeanour once inside. But in the Maga universe, there is a collective shrug.
Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the watchdog Media Matters for America, said: “The rightwing media very much does not want to be talking about this week. You see both CNN and MSNBC covering the trial pretty much throughout as it plays out, whereas over on Fox it’s one of many stories that they’re covering and not a particularly prominent one at that.”
Fox News, America’s most watched cable television network, has similarly played down past Trump dramas such as the impeachment trials and the congressional panel investigating the January 6 attack, Gertz noted. “You see a similar situation where news outlets are providing constant coverage of big breaking news events and Fox News is feeding its audience its typical culture war mix and avoiding talking about what is quite clearly bad news for their candidate of choice.”
When Trump-friendly networks do turn to the trial, they give viewers an alternative narrative from the one dominating CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post. After a hearing has wrapped for the day, Fox News regularly carries live coverage of Trump’s diatribes against the judge, Biden and the cold temperature of the courtroom.
It has also amplified his narrative of martyrdom. Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, told Fox News: “This is literally like some of the civil rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s.” Jesse Watters, a co-host on The Five on the same network, worried that it is unfair to make a man who is almost 80 sit for hour after hour. “It’s not healthy,” he said. “He needs sunlight. He needs activity. He needs to be walking around. He needs action. It is really cruel and unusual punishment to make a man do that, and any time he moves, they threaten to throw him in prison.”
They have even defended Trump – who regularly mocks Biden as “Sleepy Joe” – for falling asleep in court. Sean Hannity, a Fox News host, said on his radio show: “By the way, I think I’d fall asleep if I was there.” His colleague Laura Ingraham added: “I’d be falling asleep at that trial, too.”
Gertz observed: “They’re basically making the case that actually it’s good to be unable to not nod off in the middle of your own trial. These are people who have spent the last several years attacking Joe Biden for supposedly being too old, too enfeebled to be president. They understand that their viewers, to the extent that they are interested in the trial at all, want to hear full-throated support for Donald Trump, and so they are finding ways to provide that.”
The trial has provoked fury on the far right and vows of retribution. Mike Davis, a lawyer and Trump ally, told Bannon’s War Room podcast that Democrats are “running a criminal conspiracy to violate the civil rights of President Trump” and promised to “rain hell on these Biden Democrats”. Davis warned: “I would say to these guys, lawyer up.”
Interviews with longstanding Trump supporters found the media-coverage split screen translates to one’s view of the trial. There is no sign that the airing of the charges that Trump falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment is shifting opinions.
Steve Robinson, 75, an engineer and contractor from Leesburg, Virginia, is following the trial via the rightwing channels One America News Network and Newsmax and, occasionally, Fox News. “No CNN,” he said.
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Robinson commented: “The charges are made up and it’s a travesty of justice. It’s embarrassing for us as a country that’s happening when there is no evidence and there is no damage to anyone and it’s obviously a political witch-hunt. The leftists are enjoying it.”
Lynette Kennedy McQuain, 63, an insurance salesperson from Lost Creek, West Virginia, said: “New York should spend their tax dollars on criminal behaviour, things that are going on in the city rather than trying to take down a former president. It’s not illegal to pay money to quiet something if you want to.”
The current trial is seen as potentially the least serious of the four criminal cases against Trump but is likely to be the only one completed before the election. McQuain added: “It’s gotten to the place now where there’s so many trials that you wonder where it’s going to end.
“How many more trials are we going to put Donald Trump through? He’s a presidential candidate again. Come on, that’s a little crazy to me. The whole country sees it that way except a few left-leaning people who just want to get Trump. Judicially we’ve got a whole bunch of other things we could be fighting.”
Michael Sheppard, 42, a home builder from Canton, North Carolina, who has been following the trial “passingly” via the social media platform X, said: “I know the trial exists. I know the basics behind it but I really don’t care what they say.”
Sheppard believes that it is common practice to pay someone off out of court if the alternative would be more costly. He intends to vote for Trump in November but added: “I wish we had somebody right of Trump. Trump’s a centrist.”
Opinion polls have tightened in recent weeks with Biden closing the gap on Trump. It is uncertain what impact the trial will have on the election. The former president himself is thought unlikely to testify, but the court is likely to hear lurid, sordid details that even Trump’s allies in the media might find hard to resist. He is not out of danger yet.
Charlie Sykes, a political columnist and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, said: “The danger of this trial for Trump and for the rightwing media is that many of the details are going to be quite salacious, quite dramatic and easily understood.
“People are going to understand a Playboy model saying ‘I had an affair’ as opposed to some of the more arcane things. It’s going to be interesting to see how the rightwing media covers it. Fox News are going to be torn between ‘this is pretty compelling material’ versus ‘it’s also pretty damaging’.”
But the experience of the past eight years suggest that Trump’s base understand who he is and are willing to accept it, sexual peccadilloes and all. Sean Spicer, his first White House press secretary, said: “I would argue that after four years of Trump in office and almost four years of Biden, people have pretty much made up their mind who they’re with and this is largely going to be a get-out-the-vote-operation election.
“I don’t think anyone seeing anything right now on television or reading it online is somehow going to learn something new about Donald Trump.”