When Jake Tapper tried to claim it was wildly wrong for Fox host Laura Ingraham to suggest liberal networks were reveling in the Trump indictments, he should have imagined MSNBC regulars sounding giddy at Trump being arraigned in Georgia in “a really dirty, dangerous scary place,” where he could end up “really freaked out.”
On American Voices with Alicia Menendez on Saturday, the host touted a new NBC News article (or call it a press release) outlining how the Biden-Harris team “is expected to use the first debate to highlight the GOP’s attacks on reproductive freedom and threats of democracy in the form of election denialism…the campaign expects the candidates to try to out-MAGA each other on the debate stage in Milwaukee. We can’t ignore the biggest threat to American democracy, Donald Trump’s hold on the GOP.”
Then came the dirty, scary jail part:
ALICIA MENENDEZ: Trump, the 18 other codefendants, they must surrender in Fulton County by Friday. How is this process in Georgia going to be different from what we’ve seen in federal court?
JILL WINE-BANKS: It’s going to be very different because they have said that they are going to do mug shots and fingerprints. And he will be turning himself in at the Fulton County Jail, not in a federal building, not in a clean, nice environment. It is, from what we hear from the press, a really dirty, dangerous, scary place. So it’s going to be a very different picture. And I think the picture of him there, I think his experience of being in a real jail – I can tell you that some of the Watergate defendants, when they were put in the D.C. jail, really freaked out. And we had to move them to a Army base where they could be housed without being in fear at all times so that they could cooperate and testify.
Caleb Howe at Mediaite noted the Wine-Banks horror scenario echoed those of fellow former Watergate figure John Dean, who said on CNN Friday that it’s “a hellhole” and just “a whiff of that place” might convince Trump’s co-defendants to consider making deals. Trump niece Mary Trump and her podcast guests were even more enthusiastic about the idea on Saturday.
Menendez than touted a new column by Wine-Banks: “You argue that each of Trump’s trials should be televised. And I wonder, as I listen to Jennifer [Rubin] talk about the way in which this has not broken through with Republican leaders, and with Republican voters, to the extent to which you believe that transparency might break through to them and, in a larger sense, help preserve democracy.”
Wine-Banks argued “I do think that there is enough Republicans who will watch the trial, and will be mesmerized by it, and we’ll see that, like Richard Nixon, he is a crook. And they will change their vote. So, I think it’s one of the only hopes we have.”
