Suggestion from the 2018 State of the Union
Donald Trump is on trial right now in New York City, facing criminal charges for “business fraud.” However, that term is really the last step that began with (1) having adulterous affairs (2) with porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal (3) just months after Trump’s wife Melania gave birth to son Barron, then (4) covering up the Daniels affair by paying $130,000 in “hush money” to Daniels (5) through Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, as well as (6) involving the Trump-friendly National Enquirer in paying $150,000 to McDougal to kill the story of her affair with Trump, and (7) paying off a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child Trump allegedly fathered out of wedlock. According to the New York prosecutors, the covering up of such payments by Trump and others constitutes falsifying New York State business records. Ultimately, all of these actions were designed to influence the 2016 presidential election by keeping important information about Trump’s character and crimes out of the news. And while the cover-ups worked to some extent in 2016, presumably the facts are not hidden anymore.
Understandably, however, the news media have had a bit of a hard time describing the subject matter of Trump’s trial for purposes of short headlines or to appeal to the short attention spans of many readers and viewers. Thus, we have seen the trial described as:
–The Trump “hush money trial”. This seems to be the most popular moniker by the mainstream news media.
–The Trump “business fraud trial”
—“Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial”
–Trump’s “New York trial.”
–Just the “Trump trial.” That one (from CBS) really seems to be giving up on creativity.
Our preference is to call it something like the “Trump hush money trial.” That at least references that Trump did something very wrong and tried to cover it up for political purposes (otherwise he wouldn’t have had to pay anybody hush money). With Trump, there are always so many crimes and scandals that, once again, it’s hard to describe them in a thorough yet easily digestible way.
Photo by Mike Licht, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/JlqfrD
