Rachel Maddow addressed the closing arguments in Donald Trump’s hush money trialTuesday, breaking down the fundamental flaws in the defense, which has attempted to downplay how damning Stormy Daniels’ story was to Trump’s campaign in 2016.
“That is an empirically observable thing. That is a thing we can check,” Maddow said. “Did it matter? At the time, we were all alive and sentient when it happened. We can remember. We can check.”
However, as Maddow—and the prosecution—has pointed out, the fear around Daniels coincided with the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” audio tape.
“When the Access Hollywood tape came out just a month before the 2016 election, it did knock hurricane news out of the news cycle,” she said, “Not only did Trump’s comments about grabbing straight for women’s genitals make front page news across the country, the news really did—in real life—lead to an avalanche of Republicans calling for Trump to drop out of the race.”
“Why make an argument like that, that is so easily disprovable, even by people’s own living memories, right?” Maddow continued, “All these jurors, you know, these jurors are not junior high school students. They were all old enough in 2016 to have lived through it and to remember it. Hope Hicks, the Trump campaign press secretary, when the tape came out, described the release of the Access Hollywood tape by saying this, she said, ‘I had a good sense to believe this was going to be a massive story. I think there was a consensus among all of us that the tape was damaging and that this was a crisis.’”
Maddow then spoke to a “dramatic moment” during Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Joshua Steinglass’ closing argument. Steinglass performed a hypothetical reenactment of the one-minute-and-36-second phone conversation between Michael Cohen and Trump concerning a pay out of hush money to Daniels. The defense says the conversation was too short to have included the damning evidence Cohen testified to in court.
Forgive me for a minute, but let’s try a little experiment. I will be Cohen. Hey, Keith, how’s it going? It seems like this prankster might be a 14-year-old kid. If I text you the number, can you call and talk to his family?
See if you could let them know how serious this is? It’s not a joke. Yeah. All right. Thanks, pal. Hey, is the boss near you? Can you pass on the phone for a minute? I’ll wait just a couple of seconds. [pause]
Hey, boss, I know you’re busy, but I just wanted to let you know that this other thing is moving forward with my friend Keith Davidson and the other party that we discussed. It’s back on track.
I’m going to try one last time to get our friend David, our friend David Pecker, to pay. But if it’s not, it’s going to be on us to take care of it. Aha. Yeah. All right. Good luck in Tampa. Bye.
“And then just Steinglass says, ‘49 seconds.’”
Every day brings a new prognostication that is making President Joe Biden’s campaign operatives worry or freak out. Is Donald Trump running away with the election? No. Not even close.
