Here Are Just Ten of the Dumbest Moments on CNN from Trump’s Arraignment

April 4th, 2023 6:50 PM

Call it their Super Bowl, the greatest day of their lives, or the pinnacle of their careers. Either way, CNN went wall-to-wall Tuesday with coverage of former President Trump’s arrest and arraignment on charges by far-left, Soros-backed Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg in relation to payments made to Stormy Daniels. and, as such, CNN’s coverage showed a network relapsing back to its Trump-centric days of 2015 and 2016 with imbecilic hot takes masquerading as expert analysis.

NewsBusters suffered through Tuesday afternoon so you didn’t have to and below represents ten moments (in chronological order) from the embarrassing display of CNN’s non-existent status as a news organization.

1. 1:15 p.m. Eastern — “Stunning” to See Trump’s Motorcade & Time to Psychoanalyze

AC360 host Anderson Cooper chimed in on the shame train when he marveled at Trump’s motorcade moving from Trump Tower to a Manhattan courthouse as if he was witnessing one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

“It's just stunning to see these images, him driving through this city, which he knows so well, has driven down the FDR Drive, which he's driving down right now, looking at buildings, probably scoping them out. What do you think is going through his mind today,” Cooper wondered to faux conservative-turned-wannabe Democrat, Alyssa Farah Griffin of The View.

Griffin flexed her power from the Trump White House, bragging she had been “in a motorcade with him more times than I can count, and this is a much smaller motorcade than the former President is used to.”

She also engaged in psychoanalyzing, claiming he’s likely “not happy about this” as he “care[s] about his legacy...and that's got to be weighing on him as he's driving in a motorcade through his hometown.”

Cooper replied the helicopter shots were “extraordinary” and there were “no fans lining the sides of the road” or “supporters cheering him on.” Instead, he huffed, it was “an average day in New York City where life of the city goes on.”


2. 1:22 p.m. Eastern — “There Are Hundreds and Hundreds of Cameras” Here for This “Incredible Scene”

Senior crime and Justice reporter Shimon Prokupecz took the post on the streets of New York describing the media melee in much the same way NBC’s Al Roker would during presidential inaugurations.

Except this time, however, it was for a pure media circus. And because it involves two things the national media love (Donald Trump and themselves), he couldn’t contain his excitement:

It's just an incredible scene out here, Anderson. There are hundreds and hundreds of cameras just pointed at that door where they expect the former president to walk in, trying to get that shot of him walking into this building.


3. 1:24 p.m. Eastern — Cooper Giddily Announces “Donald J. Trump Is Under Arrest”

Upon seeing Trump emerge from an SUV and walk into a city court building, Cooper was ready to utter words he and his fellow liberal journalists had been waiting to utter: “Donald J. Trump is under arrest.”

Cooper excitedly asked former deputy Manhattan D.A. Karen Friedman Agnifilo to confirm it and even asked both her and former NYPD official Jon Miller whether Trump would see a jail cell and who would tell him he was under arrest (click “expand”):

COOPER: And, Karen, you're saying, as soon as he enters that building, he is technically under arrest?

FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO: Yes. He will be in the custody of the DA's office investigators, obviously, with his Secret Service guard as well, and he will be told he is under arrest, and he is in their custody at this time.

COOPER: So, at this moment, at 1:24 p.m. Eastern time, Donald J. Trump is under arrest?

FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO: Yes, he is.

MILLER: He's going several floors up in this building to a district attorney's office where the detective squad is. There's a room there where the electronic machine that captures fingerprints electronically is there. Against one of the walls, there's a small cell. He will not be handcuffed. He will not be placed in the cell. They will capture the prints and take the former president and his legal team to a room to wait where they may be able to read that indictment —

COOPER: Will he see the cell?

MILLER: — He will. He will see the cell in the room where they do the print capture, if they use the room they're planning to.

(....)

COOPER: Karen, you said, when he walked in that building, and that's when he is technically under arrest, who is it who says to him -- I don't know if they say, "Mr. President or Mr. Trump, you are under arrest"?

FRIEDMAN AGNIFILO: Well, the definition of arrest is, you are in custody, right, somebody's custody And so, in the moment that he walks in, he is in the custody of them. What the — the DA investigator will say the words, “You're under arrest, and these are the charges against you,” and ask him certain pedigree information, unless that's already been pre-filled-out or prearranged.


4. 2:49 p.m. Eastern — Cooper, Griffin SWOON Over....Trump Having to Open a Door Himself?

The single most embarrassing moment came shortly after Trump entered the Manhattan courtroom to be arraigned and plead not guilty to the 34 charges relating to the Daniels payments. CNN played a brief loop of video showing Trump walking from a holding room to the courtroom like the Zapruder film or a review to decide the Super Bowl.

During this obsessive playback, Cooper jumped in so he could tell The Lead and State of the Union host Jake Tapper that it was “interesting” to see how Trump “didn't even have somebody holding the door open for him.”

“I don't know if you notice...There's a court officer, I believe, who enters before him doesn't hold the door open for him. And the former President actually has to push the door open for himself, which is probably the first time he's had to do that in quite some time,” Cooper added, as if he had noticed something monumental.

Griffin similarly took notice as if she had stumbled onto something earthshattering: “That alone, knowing Donald Trump will stick with him in — in a way, just a symbolic way of noticing that the difference, the lack of pomp and circumstance, the lack of sort of, you know, service being provided for him.”

“Just that moment — that could have been a stark one that stands out to him,” she said.


5. 2:51 p.m. Eastern — Esteemed Media Elites Play Body Language Experts With Trump Photo

Anytime media elites claim to know more than you do or insist you comply with their narrative, show them a clip like this where Tapper acted as though he had a Ph.D. in body language: “[I]f we could go back to the picture that we just showed a second ago, he was looking off to the distance. He looked really irritated and annoyed...I mean, Jamie Gangel you’ve been covering Donald Trump for a long time, that is a pissed-off Donald Trump.”

Gangel also hyper-examined the courtroom still photo: 

Right. I — you know, this is not defiant. We’ve seen pictures that, sort of, were sobering. No question that is an angry Donald Trump. There’s two things to point out, in addition to the fact that no one held the door open for him, we have been told that he was likely going to stop in the hallway and speak on his way. It did not happen[.]


6. 2:54 p.m. Eastern — Listen as Trump-Hating, Former FBI Stooge Andrew McCabe Tries to Contain His Glee

Along with also-rans Griffin and George Conway, CNN also included McCabe in its near-endless conga line of experts. As such, Tapper invited him to weigh in on the day’s proceedings thus far:

“I will say, though, Jake that these photographs of the former president are so striking, but to me, they are very familiar in a way,” McCabe observed.

He explained that, during his two decades “in the FBI” and “having been with numerous people on arrest and arraignment day, there is an undeniable humility and humanity that comes out against whoever has been called before the court and accused publicly of a crime in this process”.


7. 3:15 p.m. Eastern — More Body Language Ph.D.’s From King, Phillip as Gangel Comes Back for More

Gangel returned with more pointless psychoanalyzing that’s supposedly top-of-the-line analysis one could only find or possess on CNN. She informed viewers that “the close-ups of Trump's face are quite striking, but seeing that wide shot where he is at the defense table, and you see the court police, he's in custody. He's — he's in their control. Ah, I think is very striking.”

Inside Politics hosts Abby Phillip and John King joined the parade of newfound experts with the former observing an “angry,” “frustrat[ed],” and “hunched over” Trump with “parsed” “lips” and the latter joyfully proclaiming he’s “forced today to live in reality” and the ordeal coming off like “a thud.”


8. 3:17 p.m. Eastern — Dictator John King Declares GOP Claims of Conflicts of Interest Dangerous, ‘Irrelevant’

The most maddening moment arrived here when King proclaimed pushback against an indictment or questions about conflicts of interest to be out of bounds and akin to death threats to law enforcement.

King’s use of stochastic terrorism came as he drew audible gasps on CNN’s set when he revealed that “Donald Trump Jr. just tweeted a picture of the judge’s daughter, saying she worked for the Biden-Harris campaign ‘seems’ to be ‘relevant.’”

King then unleashed a torrent of liberal hackery: “It is not relevant. It is not relevant. She’s an individual adult, but this is what — I was about to say this is the game they play. It’s not a game. It’s not a game. This is how they play.”

If Trump were going before a judge whose daughter had worked for Vice President Mike Pence, it’d be more than a safe bet King wouldn’t be in need of a safe space and instead would be shouting from the mountaintops about judicial bias.

Instead, he drew a “right” from Tapper and claimed such mentions from the odious Americans who identify with Trump’s GOP are why the country’s in dire straits:

They try to intimidate they attack and they put at risk people who should not be dragged into this process if Donald — Donald Trump is presumed innocent if he can beat these charges, good for him. The judge’s daughter has nothing to do with this, but this is what they do. This is how he — they have so taken this country off the rails and outside the norms.

His ex-wife Bash agreed: “And there’s a reason why they took the prosecutor's pictures off the — off the website for similar reasons, and it’s really unfortunate that that is a world in which we live and you have people on social media doing what you just described.”


9. 3:20 p.m. Eastern — Tapper, Former Assistant D.A. Call for Trumps to Face Charges for Stating Facts

Shortly after King’s tirade, Tapper and Friedman Agnifilo pontificated about how Trump and his son should face criminal charges for threatening the life of the judge and his daughter for pointing out on social media that the judge’s daughter worked for the 2020 Democratic ticket.

Tapper lobbed a softball, claiming such a tweet occurred in an era such as ours “where political violence is increasingly becoming more and more normal and more and more accepted.”

Having started Tuesday as a CNN legal analyst, Friedman Agnifilo has begun taking whiffs of the spotlight and, as such, gave CNN’s Resistance-heavy audience what they wanted to hear (click “expand”):

No, that will — that will not be accepted. That will not be okay. In fact, the fact that this is going on significantly longer than anyone would have anticipated much longer than a normal arraignment leads me to believe that the judge is having some sort of very serious discussions in court right now, because motion practice and all the things that Donald Trump wants to do, make the arguments about whether the statute of limitations or sufficiency of the grand jury or whether a charge counts as elevating it to false business record, that will all be done in writing in motion practice. It will be briefed by lawyers at another date. Right now, the only thing that’s happening in court. It was just supposed to be an arraignment. It would not be anything about custody or bail since this crime is not bail eligible, so what could they possibly be talking about? I think it’s the fact that Donald Trump has crossed a massive line here in New York when he went — when — when he had a picture of himself with a baseball bat to Alvin Bragg’s head. And then right after that, calling in his way, calling for death and destruction in the streets that crossed a line in New York. 

He could have easily be charged with another crime there, obstruction of governmental administration because he was trying to intimidate — using intimidation and threats to interfere with the court process, doing the same thing to the judge these veiled threats to his daughter. That’s another. He’s — they are committing more crimes, and so whether he gets arrested for them is a decision that will have to be made by law enforcement. But I can assure you this judge — Judge Merchan — is not going to put up with it, and this judge knows the Trump Organization and Trump and his ways and his allies. He sat in — was the judge who presided over the Trump Organization trial, so he is not a stranger to the ways of Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s orbit, and he will absolutely have a pre-prepared and pre-planned speech — an admonition that he is giving to — to — he is defendant Trump right now before Judge Merchan and letting him know what that means. And what as the judge of this court will expect of him as a defendant. 


10. 3:47 p.m. Eastern — Trump Lawyers SCHOOL Prokupecz Whining About Trump Criticizing Bragg, Judge

Trump’s lawyers went into the lion’s den of reporters following the arraignment and, near the end of the gaggle, Prokupecz could be heard repeatedly berating them for their client’s criticism of both the judge and Bragg.

“He’s not going after the judge. He’s not going after the judge. He commented that he thought that there were some issues that may cause a conflict. That’s not going after the judge....He has said that the DA — he is angry because the D.A. has brought a case that is unjustified,” said Susan Necheles, one of three Trump attorneys who represented him in court.