One way the leftist media want to add juice to the Trump trial is to suggest the jurors will be threatened by Trump outbursts in court or on social media. On Friday’s All Things Considered, they brought in “NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef” to spread the conspiracy theory that Trump messages will lead to violence. They really should be blunter, and just call her the Far Right warning correspondent.
AILSA CHANG: Odette, you've looked at what it can mean to serve on a jury for a Trump trial, like the safety concerns, the repercussions personally. Tell us what you're finding.
YOUSEF: So, Ailsa, the challenge here is that, you know, jurors need to feel that their privacy and safety are not at risk when they serve. But the court also needs to maintain some transparency to court proceedings so that there's public faith in the process. And finding that sweet spot is challenging, and it's been especially hard in the Trump trials. And that's because Donald Trump owns a social media platform, Ailsa. And so, you know, we've seen this pattern, a correlation, where, when he posts criticism about specific people or processes, what follows are threats.
And this has already been happening in this case. Judge Merchan's own daughter has been at the receiving end of harassment. And I've spoken to some people, including a former juror on a trial involving a Trump affiliate, who've been just stunned that there haven't been more protective measures set up at the outset of this trial, given what's happened in the past.
Notice the vagueness around “Merchan’s daughter,” who could be a minor, for all we know. NPR hasn’t mentioned Loren Merchan on air, and the only thing the shows up in NPR’s search engine is an online AP dispatch that underlines she’s a professional Democrat:
Loren Merchan is president of Authentic Campaigns, which has collected at least $70 million in payments from Democratic candidates and causes since she helped found the company in 2018, records show.
The firm's past clients include President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Majority PAC, a big-spending political committee affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Senate Majority PAC has paid Authentic Campaigns $15.2 million, according to campaign finance disclosures.
Even AP tries to claim it’s a “daisy chain of innuendoes” to connect the judge to the daughter.
Yousef then turned to former Obama aide and CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem (but just like Merchan, NPR launders out the Democrat background).
YOUSEF: She's a former national security official. She says at this point, courts should be expecting Trump to complain about the proceedings and that some of his followers may respond in violent ways.
JULIETTE KAYYEM: It feels like we're sort of sleepwalking into 2024. It's just our democratic institutions that used to have these norms, but, well, those norms no longer are holding. And we have to accept that and prepare with the expectation that violence or the threat of violence is going to be part of our democratic processes, at least for the short term.
Yesterday, I joined @NPR All Things Considered to discuss with Odette Yousef how we seem to be "sleepwalking" in 2024 as Trump continues with intimidation and threats of violence. How to keep jurors safe? Assume they are not. https://t.co/xpkCfP32Sy
— Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) April 20, 2024
This is how pro-Biden news outlets are "setting the table" for the trial. That Trump will inspire violence by objecting to the partisanship on display (including in the press). This is the media trying to create a "gag order" through intimidation:
CHANG: Well, I am curious, Odette -- if these so-called norms don't seem to be holding right now, how are you seeing that play out?
YOUSEF: You know, there was a policy paper, Ailsa, released earlier this year by the National Conference of State Court Administrators that identified juror safety and well-being among the top issues that need to be addressed these days. And that's not just for the Trump trials. You know, someone with the organization mentioned the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, Derek Chauvin's trial...
CHANG: Yeah.
YOUSEF: ...Trials of people in Trump's orbit. We are in a moment now in the U.S. where norms have shifted. People who are civically involved, whether it be in trials, in election administration, on school boards, you name it, are now increasingly targeted with violence or the threat of violence. And that's a reality that won't reverse itself overnight, and it chills democratic participation. So people who can should be thinking about safety of these people in ways they may not have had to consider before.
