As an avid consumer of news even before I began writing it nearly 15 years ago, it’s been amazing to me to watch the evolution of right-wing media outlets from the absolute fringes of information-gathering to what is now relative mainstream popularity. One supposes it goes hand in hand with the rise of Fox News over the last 24 years and even perhaps the election of Barack Obama a decade ago — the audience for conservative publications is naturally prejudiced and the backlash against our first black President was big.
One outlet that’s been here the entire time, however, is Bill Buckley’s 63-year-old “magazine” the National Review. It could be said that NR and its successor online helped, in fact, to shape what it even means to be a conservative since before the Vietnam War.
Maybe that’s why the hosts of Fox and Friends nearly swallowed their tongues when National Review author Andrew McCarthy — no slouch in the anti-progressive media universe — told them that Donald Trump is almost one hundred percent certain to face indictments over campaign finance violations.
That’s not something that readers of my byline will be surprised to see, but coming from McCarthy, that’s huge — especially considering the fact that there’s never been a Supreme Court ruling on whether or not a President can even be indicted.
But McCarthy told the hosts that the case in the Southern District of New York should have Trump worried:
The Southern District of New York case, which is different from the Mueller case on Cohen — they are clearly going after the president on campaign finance violations. It’s clear Trump is the target and he’ll be indicted eventually.”
As host Ed Henry struggled to make sense of what he was hearing, reminding McCarthy that a “sitting President” can’t be indicted — which is not actually a law, but a rule that’s thus far been adhered to by the DOJ — McCarthy explained:
The president is not supposed to get an advantage from being president. All we say is he can’t be put through the criminal process while he’s president. They can indict him and he can be tried down the road. Are they setting the stage to file charges against him? I can’t come to any other conclusion.”
Watch the exchange here:
Featured image via screen capture
