In the week leading up to the conviction delivered in a Manhattan courtroom on Friday, right-wing media was focused on Donald Trump’s innocence. Hosts of the popular podcast “Timcast IRL”, which scored an exclusive, 17-minute interview with the former president before his speech at the Libertarian National Convention, discussed the case at length.
Their guest, Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official, argued that he had watched Michael Cohen – Trump’s former lawyer and the star witness in the criminal case against the former president – “implode the prosecution’s case”. Host Tim Pool agreed that “there is nothing here” and the case was “absurdity and insanity”.
The three hosts and their guest had all been watching the case very closely; they were deep in the weeds. And they were utterly convinced it was bogus, that only a “rigged system” would find him guilty.