To sum it up for you, ABC’s Good Morning America enthusiastically declared their reaction on Friday to Thursday’s verdict of the Trump trial, striking a tone ranging from false solemnity to blatant partisanship. As per his usual, co-host and former Clinton-sidekick George Stephanopoulos, commenced his monologue with a heavy air of reverence for the jurors.
In a first for the United States, Donald Trump becomes the earliest and only former president to face a felony conviction. Trump’s conviction was on a whole 34 felony counts related to falsifying business records as part of an unlawful scheme to sway the 2016 election. Jurors have held Trump accountable three times already this year, marking an interesting note for the upcoming presidential election – convicted felons can indeed run for president.
Flags of partisan cheers were flying high when the network’s Correspondent Aaron Katersky called Thursday’s verdict “extraordinary.” He went on to add color to Trump’s reaction and his subsequent rallying of the Republican Party ahead of this fall’s election.
An unexpected turn, even for ABC, happened when they brought on Michael Cohen, Trump’s former confidant, and Stephanopoulos took on the role of a counselor. He engaged in a borderline therapeutic conversation with Cohen about the case, his time in the courtroom, his reputation, and his interactions with Trump.
Of course, Stephanopoulos did not miss a beat to express his dismay that Cohen had previously gone to any length to support Trump, thereby adding fuel to his other narrative of disbelief that anyone could still consider voting for Trump and the Republican Party.
Interestingly, similar to how we saw on CBS, both Stephanopoulos and Cohen seemed baffled that voters would dare prioritize issues regarding the economy, education, immigration, and inflation over their opinion of Trump as a risk to democracy.
Despite the absence of anchor David Muir to wave the ABC flag of doom for Trump’s electoral prospects, political director Rick Klein took it upon himself to highlight a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll indicating that 20% of Trump’s voters may reconsider their support based on this conviction.
To wrap things up, both Stephanopoulos and Congress correspondent Rachel Scott still seem unable to believe that Republicans would continue to support Trump. Scott, for all her left-leaning views, lamented Trump’s influence on the Republican party and the seeming small effect of the indictments, without giving a thought to other issues at play. Ultimately, she acknowledged an unsettling realization for the left that the Republican Party may now be closer than ever to Trump despite his guilty verdict.
So, there you have it: ABC spent an impressive amount of effort to paint a self-satisfied, biased picture of the fallout from this trial, feeding into their narrative with unabashedly pointed commentary. It begs the question: are these so-called journalists or cheerleaders?
