On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump was indicted again, with charges this time focusing on the events of January 6 insurrection. Trump was hit with four federal criminal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, which in this case is defined as an attempt to “oppress, threaten and intimidate” people in their right to vote in an election.
Naturally, the big three cable news networks went into breaking news mode during the 5 p.m. ET hour once news of the latest charges came to light.
CNN brought out the Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper-led panels to discuss the news during the hour that typically belongs to The Lead.
There you have it. Donald Trump has been indicted pic.twitter.com/W5sGUuH0rd
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 1, 2023
During her primetime show, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins interviewed Trump’s defense attorney John Lauro who tussled with Collins on what the former president was really asking for.
Lauro: And the final ask that Mr. Trump made to vice president pence was simply pause the voting. There’s nothing inherently unconstitutional or illegal about that, He’s not a lawyer. He’s a businessman pic.twitter.com/Rd2tsd0Jm5
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 2, 2023
Over at MSNBC, the news broke during Deadline: White House, and later in the evening, Rachel Maddow, who only hosts Mondays, returned to the network’s airwaves to cover the latest charges against the 45th POTUS.
BREAKING: Donald Trump has been indicted by a Washington D.C. grand jury on four criminal counts for his efforts to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election pic.twitter.com/xCtSBBwlr0
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) August 1, 2023
Ah. Well. OK, then.
Special coverage tonight on MSNBC — I’ll see you there live at 8PM Eastern.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) August 1, 2023
Andrew Weismann, the co-host of MSNBC podcast Prosecuting Donald Trump appeared during MSNBC’s breaking news coverage, where he spoke about U.S. special counsel Jack Smith’s intentions to bring these charges.
.@AWeissmann_ reacts to the indictment of Donald Trump in Jack Smith’s election probe: “This to me, shows that Jack Smith wants to get to trial and he wants to get to trial quickly” pic.twitter.com/DScVeWOMoN
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) August 1, 2023
As for Fox News, the news broke during The Five, and the network did not deviate from its schedule and covered the breaking news as part of its regular evening programming lineup.
Fox News’ Jesse Watters on latest Trump indictments:
“If this goes to trial, are we going to now have to go back and find fraud in the 2020 election?” pic.twitter.com/jnygSdqjOD
— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) August 1, 2023
Jonathan Turley, a Fox News legal analyst, and George Washington University law professor, described the latest indictment as “rather loose at the joints.”
Screenshot courtesy of Fox News
Turley then added, “ I’m a bit surprised I haven’t seen anything in the indictment so far, which is new. You know, we heard about witness tampering and things of that kind. This is largely going through the states. Arizona, Georgia, restating what has been in the press. It even includes reference to that phone call where the president says all you have to do is find 11,000 votes.”
“You know, for those of us who’ve looked at that phone call. That doesn’t seem to be a criminal matter. But if you look at it fairly, the president seems to be saying all I need is 11,000 votes,” he continued.
“So when we’re looking at a recount, we’re not talking about a huge threshold for us to show that the election should have come out differently. Yet Smith throws that in. And so I think that, as I said before, the indictment came down, the concern was this would play to Smith’s weakness, that he tends to stretch evidence, stretch the law when he wants to go after someone. I’m still looking in this indictment for something that is really a sort of aha moment…I was hoping that if there were an indictment, then you would have this moment where you say, okay, I get it. This could be debated. But you’ve got something new here. I haven’t seen anything particularly new.”