A few telling morsels as we end the day. First Fox was out tonight with a breaking news alert about the drama of the day but with a jarring and revealing framing. Said Fox’s Bret Baier: The President is facing “the most serious and consequential personnel decision of his life tonight.”
Well, what personnel decision would that be? There’s no big personnel decision. Except of course that they’re referring to whether or not President Trump will decide to “pull the plug” on the Russia probe, as Baier put it.
Here’s the key video
Very Revealing Framing from Fox: Trump facing “most serious and consequential personnel decision of his life tonight”. i.e., whether to fire DOJ leadership and Bob Mueller. pic.twitter.com/WkzN8JR1NZ
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 10, 2018
Next there’s this story just out from CNN.
It’s Don Lemon – a frequent target of the President’s – interviewing Michael Cohen, who has been totally silent since yesterday’s raid. It is a remarkably subdued, conciliatory Michael Cohen, almost the mirror opposite of the in-your-face, trash-talking brawler we’ve all watched now for the last two years.
Contrary to Trump’s talk about a ‘break in’, Cohen tells Lemon the FBI agents conducting the raids were “were extremely professional, courteous and respectful.” Is he worried? “I would be lying to you if I told that I am not. Do I need this in my life? No. Do I want to be involved in this? No.”
This is hardly surprising on its own. Finding out you’re in serious legal jeopardy is a jarring, sobering, frightening experience. Only a fool would publicly attack the law enforcement officers involved in his case. But the shift tells us volumes about the gravity of the situation.
