Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Commentary by Frank Miele originally published by RealClearPolitics and RealClearWire
“Do you accept the verdict of the New York jury that found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts?”
That will be the question asked of every Republican from now until the presidential election in November, and if Republicans don’t know how to answer, they will look like idiots, which is exactly what the left-leaning media wants.
You can’t just say yes because the implied premise of the question is that the verdict was fair, and that could not be further from the truth. But you can’t just say no either, because the verdict is a fact, just like the O.J. verdict. It exists, and it has to be explained.
Of course, what the media inquisitors will try to do is paint Trump supporters into a corner. If you say you don’t support the verdict, you will be “justice deniers,” in the term smartly coined by talk-show host Dan Bongino last week. But Republicans can’t let that be the final word.
They have to explain that when you say you are accepting the verdict, it just means you are accepting that the verdict was the inevitable result of a corrupt New York legal system. Anyone who represents Trump or the MAGA movement has to be fully in command of the facts and be prepared to explain them. Start with the assignment of Judge Juan Merchan to the case and ask why this is the third Trump-related case he has been assigned to. Talk about the judge’s refusal to recuse himself despite his status as a Joe Biden donor and his daughter’s status as a multi-million dollar fund-raiser for Democrats.
Then demand answers for the multiple reversible errors Merchan committed in creating the court record – the salacious and irrelevant testimony of porn star Stormy Daniels, the refusal to allow Trump to present an expert witness who could explain federal election law to the jury and why Trump didn’t violate it. How about the unconstitutional decision to withhold from Trump and his attorneys the exact nature of the underlying crime, which turned misdemeanor charges into felonies, and Merchan’s claim that the jury did not even have to be unanimous in identifying such an underlying crime?
Of course, CNN, MSNBC, and the Sunday morning news shows won’t raise any of those troubling issues, so when a Trump supporter tries to explain the difference between a fair trial and a show trial, they will be shouted down by their interviewers.
This is not a new playbook. We’ve been watching the same kind of “gotcha” journalism for months as Republicans have been grilled by reporters in an attempt to paint them as “election deniers.”
“Will you accept the election results of 2024 no matter what happens?”
That is the question NBC’s Kristen Welker posed to Sen. Marco Rubio during his recent appearance on “Meet the Press,” but it is nearly identical to the question being asked to every supporter of Donald Trump for the past year.
Again, anyone who answers the question affirmatively is an idiot, which is the only kind of Republican who the media celebrates. No one with a brain would pledge to accept the results of an election to be held five months from now “no matter what,” but that is exactly the commitment that President Biden and his media allies want to extract from Republicans.
Fortunately, thanks to following the example of former President Trump, more and more Republicans are learning not to get bamboozled by such questions that require you to check your brain at the door.
Sen. Rubio deflected the question by telling Welker she should be asking Democrats the same question, pointing out that Biden’s party has questioned the election of every Republican president since 2000.
But it’s not necessary to deflect; you just need to answer the question the way a smart person would answer any similar question:
No, I’m not going to accept the results no matter what. I’m going to accept them when it is obvious that the election was conducted in a free and fair manner. Do you really want me to pledge to accept the results of a rigged election? Or are you really so naive as to believe that neither political party would ever attempt to rig an election?
You have to respond directly and forcefully because what has become obvious, both before and after the verdict, is that Democrats (whether in the form of left-wing media apparatchiks or actual politicians) have made an art form out of humiliating weak Republicans. Whether it’s about rigged elections or rigged trials, the media is going to try to gaslight the public and pretend that anyone who questions the media narrative is either a justice denier or an election denier.
Fortunately, the people of the United States have been paying attention. They saw how Democrats tried to destroy President Trump with the Russian collusion hoax. They saw how Trump was impeached for telling the truth about Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine. They saw how Trump was impeached for the Jan. 6 riot even though Trump was the only one who tried to get National Guard troops assigned to protect the Capitol.
This latest conviction on 34 counts is no different. The connecting thread through all of these anti-Trump operations and the other three indictments still pending is that they were all manufactured by Democrats and promoted by the left-wing media. It is now up to Republicans to fight back. Not with violence. With votes. The media may control the narrative, but they don’t control the voters.
“Do you accept the verdict of the New York jury that found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts?”
Hell no.
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By Frank Miele – This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
