Admin correction: The headline and story have been updated to more accurately reflect what Jennifer Rubin wrote about the use of the phrase “hush money.”
Jennifer Rubin is my favorite Washington Post OpEd writer, and her column from yesterday, “The N.Y. case concerns Trump’s only successful voter deception scheme,” is a prime example of why I say that. In it, she lays out with explicit clarity what makes DA Alvin Bragg’s case at least as important as, and in some ways more important than any of the other legal quagmires Trump is slogging through in this election season.
In doing so, she hones in on what makes this case so different from all the others: Trump’s underlying crime, laid out in Bragg’s Indictment Statement of Facts, was his successful ploy to illegally prevent the release of a bombshell story that would have destroyed his chances to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Or more succinctly, it’s about how he cheated Hillary to take the White House based on that ruse (a POV that isn’t lost on readers on this site, at least.)
Here are some choice excerpts from Rubin’s piece:
The case concerns Trump’s scheme to conceal embarrassing information from voters in the 2016 election. Derided as a “rump” case, or “trivial,” it actually might be the most consequential of the four criminal cases facing the former president.
{snip}
If you doubt the importance of this case, consider an alternate history: Trump never silenced these women, Hillary Clinton won, three right-wing justices did not get appointed, Roe v. Wade remained law, and Trump never had the chance to attempt a coup in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Much depended on the facts set out in the indictment.
She then goes on to debunk the “This is only a local DA’s case so it’s not that important” line of thinking. I won’t go into that but suffice it to say she tosses those kinds of dismissals of the case into the journalistic “round file.”
But her final point in the essay is what prompted this diary by me:
Finally, the tabloid phrase “hush money” is particularly inapt in describing the case. Paying hush money isn’t illegal; falsifying business records is. Here, the alleged sex really is incidental. As Tribe tweeted, “Saying Trump is on trial for paying hush money to a porn star is like saying John Wilkes Booth was tried for sneaking up behind Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre.”
(emphases mine)
So here’s the kicker: if you got to the WaPo front page today (as it was yesterday), you’ll catch this headline:
Jury selection continues in Trump’s New York hush money trial
And if you read the text, “hush money trial” is also their go-to copy-designation in their reporting on this case, which is a monumentally historic trial actually about election fraud.
WaPo’s best Opinion Page columnist yesterday called out the use of the phrase “hush money,” which WaPo has used for stories about Trump’s trial.
I love it!
Go J.R.!
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UPDATE: As noted at the top of the diary below the title pic, the dKos admins have changed my title and the outro line (which is in italics just above) to eliminate my suggestion that Rubin was actively flagging the Post’s coverage of this trial as being tabloid-inspired. Fair enough, she doesn’t come right out and make that accusation to the outfit she works for, so my bad. But otoh, I’ll make that charge myself with regard to this particular WaPo story, also published yesterday, the title to which would fit nicely on the National Enquirer front page ( notwithstanding the prose being a bit more polished):
As hush money trial begins, Trump’s sex life emerges as key theme
And if you want a cherry on top of that steaming pile, here’s the text of the URL at the end of that WaPo link:
trump-hush-money-trial-sex-tabloids/
LOfuckingL, as they say.