Up First from NPR - Donald Trump Indicted Over 2020 Election, Conservative Media React, U.S. Bond Rating

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Donald Trump is indicted on felony charges for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. How conservative media are covering the indictment. Fitch strips the U.S. of its Triple A bond rating.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Krishnadev Calamur, Emily Kopp, Rafael Nam, Ally Schweitzer, and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Kaity Kline, Claire Murashima, and Lilly Quiroz. We get engineering support from Hannah Gluvna, and our technical director is Zac Coleman.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Donald Trump faces an unprecedented third indictment. This went over his efforts to subvert the vote and stay in power. It was fueled by lies. Trump is accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and deprive voters of their rights. I'm E. Martinez with Leila Fadl, and this is Up First from NPR News. Despite the weight of these charges, here's how one Fox News host is spinning them. The timing of this indictment was coordinated to take the heat off Biden. Trump is the frontrunner in the Republican presidential primary by a lot.

Is conservative media trying to avoid alienating his base? And Fitch has stripped the federal government of its AAA bond rating. The agency says there's been a steady deterioration of governance in the U.S. Is it a wake-up call for Congress? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin

marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. The latest indictment against Donald Trump, the third against him, results from what Attorney General Merrick Garland called the largest investigation in the Justice Department's history following the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Trump is now facing four felony charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the vote in 2020. He did that, the indictment says, by repeatedly and knowingly lying about the election's outcome in order to hold on to power. He's accused of then exploiting the violence on January 6th to delay the election certification. And special counsel Jack Smith, who was leading the investigation and after the indictment was unsealed, he addressed the nation.

The attack on our nation's capital on January 6th, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government. For more on this, we turn to, as we always do, NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson. Hi, Carrie. to, as we always do, NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson. Hi, Carrie. Hi, Leila. So more than 1,000 people have already been charged with crimes related to January 6th. Now Donald Trump is among them.

We know Trump has been indicted twice before, but Carrie, just give me a sense of how unprecedented and serious this indictment is. This is really as serious as it gets. As you mentioned, hundreds of people who entered the Capitol have gone through the court system. Many of them say they were motivated by former President Donald Trump. Now, Trump himself is charged with four felonies, leading a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government he once led and conspiring to derail the congressional session to certify the votes. This indictment says Trump took advantage of the violence at the Capitol to advance his own personal goals.

Serious charges that really accuse him of trying to undermine the democratic process. How is Trump responding? You know, Trump, who is the frontrunner in the GOP field for the 2024 presidential nomination, calls this election interference. He's name-calling the special counsel Jack Smith and asking why these charges didn't come two and a half years ago, even though cases of this scale can take a long time to put together. He also says he was relying on his advice from his lawyers at the time, and that may come up in court proceedings moving forward.

Right. There were some co-conspirators mentioned unnamed. We've been anticipating what this indictment might say about the former president and his role in the attack on the Capitol for weeks now. You've been reporting on this, waiting for this. Was there anything that surprised you? Well, it was surprising to me that Trump is the only person who's named in this indictment, the only defendant so far. But as you mentioned, there are six people who are labeled as co-conspirators. Their names are not included, but there's plenty of biographical information about them in the

court papers, and many are lawyers who help promote these bogus election fraud claims. Their descriptions line up with people we know who are of interest to investigators. These are people like Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and the former Justice Department lawyer, Jeffrey Clark. So we'll have to see what the special counsel does next with them. Okay, so what happens now, Carrie? Special counsel Jack Smith says his investigation is continuing. Former President Trump is due in court here in Washington on Thursday for an initial appearance. And moving forward, the case has been assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkin.

She's an Obama appointee and a former public defender. She's known as a tough sentencer on January 6th defendants. Now, of course, Trump is dealing with a lot of other legal troubles, this being his third criminal indictment, but he's also running for president. Does anything change if he wins re-election. It could. In some ways, Donald Trump could be running for his freedom. If he's re-elected, he might be able to get rid of this case in D.C. and the Mar-a-Lago documents case in Florida, too, but not that state one in New York, because U.S. presidents do not have the power to wipe away criminal convictions in states. NPR Justice Correspondent Keri Johnson, I'm sure we'll be talking to you a lot more in the future. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Where you turn for coverage of this latest indictment helps to shape your understanding of the story.

Now, for former President Trump, the conservative press has been both a pillar of his support, no matter the accusation, and an indicator of his popularity. And right now, he's very popular. NPR media correspondent David Foglenflik has been watching and reading conservative media's coverage since the announcement of the indictment so he can break down what's being said for us. Hi, David. Good morning, Leah. So describe for me what you've been seeing and reading. Well, in such moments, the general dynamic I find is that the closer you are to the announcement and the revelation of such event like this indictment, the more accurate and straightforward that coverage tends to be. That soon fades Last night, you know, on Fox News, as it broke, political anchor

Brett Baier had a pretty straight ahead hour, included comment from former Vice President Mike Pence's chief lawyer, very critical of Donald Trump. That said, I looked at the breadth and width of a lot of stuff online. You know, you haven't seen much acknowledgement that these may be justifiably serious charges with a few outliers. Instead, what I think you've tended to see is a lot of deflection and an argument without evidence that President Biden has politicized the Justice Department and the courts. I'll read you a headline from The Federalist. Biden delivers another blow against his primary political rival with latest Trump indictment.

So is this some sort of deflection? I mean, describe how the deflection works. Let's take an example of Fox News's newest 8 p.m. star, Jesse Waters. Here's just a snippet of what he had to say last night. The timing of this indictment was coordinated to take the heat off Biden. This is the third time this has happened. You ready? So, of course, President Biden's adult son, Hunter, is in court right now on tax and gun violation matters. A plea deal with this same federal justice department has fallen through. They're figuring out if they're going to negotiate or go to prosecution. The younger Biden's also under the intense gaze of congressional Republicans over trading on his

family's names for profit. And shows focused a lot on that last night. Sean Hannity pivoted harder than anybody I've seen on Dancing with the Stars to refocus his viewers' attention on Hunter Biden rather than the revelation of this latest indictment. And that was basically at the very top of his show last night. So it sounds like what you're describing is some whataboutism instead of covering this event. I mean, Fox has had its critical moments in the past. Brett Baier, the Fox anchor you mentioned earlier, recently gave Trump a grilling in his interview, but the network was strongly supportive of him during his presidency. And today there are so many other conservatives running against him. So why stick so closely to Trump even now? Laila, the best answer is probably the same one I gave you months ago for how Fox

found itself in court paying nearly $800 million to settle a defamation suit over whether to embrace Trump's lies about the 2020 elections and the claims of fraud that led to January 6th. They simply don't want to drive viewers away. Rupert Murdoch is the ultimate controlling owner of Fox News. He really wanted Ron DeSantis to replace Trump as the top of the Republican ticket. But DeSantis has faded. And for the moment, Trump not only has a firm hold on Republican voters generally, but on Fox viewers loyalties. And it's notable how persistent the support was for Trump up and down Fox's lineup of opinion hosts, as well as on Newsmax and OAN and elsewhere. If you think about these outlets, they don't want to alienate his voters. And this bites back that a lot of Fox's stars reached out to Trump administration

officials to try to get the then president to weigh in to stop what was happening on January 6th itself. So the talking points are surfacing that the scandal was not of Trump's behavior, but the politicization of this Justice Department. Once more, an accusation made without evidence. NPR media correspondent David Fokinflik. David, thanks. You bet. How dependable is the U.S. government at paying its debts? One of the nation's big credit watchdogs says not dependable enough. Yeah, yesterday, Fitch ratings stripped the federal government of its AAA bond rating,

citing big government deficits and a steady deterioration in governance over the past two decades. The downgrade comes just two months after leaders narrowly avoided a potentially disastrous default on the federal debt. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now for analysis. Hey, Scott. Good morning, Leda. Good morning. So in what way has the U.S. government become fiscally unreliable, according to this ratings agency? Well, the government continues to run up big deficits. That's adding to a debt that already tops $32 trillion. And Fitch says Washington has no real plan for fixing the situation. The deal between the Biden administration and House Republicans to suspend the debt limit a couple months ago barely scratches the surface.

It does limit some spending, but only in a small fraction of the overall federal budget. And it actually worsens the revenue outlook by cutting money for the IRS. It does nothing to address the long-term challenges of funding programs like Social Security and Medicare for an aging population. And Fitch points to a pretty toxic political environment that's seen repeated brinkmanship over the simple question of whether the government's going to pay its bills. You know, it's a coincidence that the credit downgrade was announced on the same day that the former president was indicted for allegedly trying to undermine the peaceful transfer of power. But given the extreme polarization and paralysis here in Washington, it's no wonder some folks may think twice about whether the government can be trusted to pay its debts. What's the Biden administration saying? Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen issued a statement saying she strongly disagrees with Fitch's move. She called it arbitrary and says it's based on outdated information. Yellen notes the U.S.

economy has bounced back more quickly than most other countries from the pandemic recession. Unemployment's near a 50-year low. Inflation's come down sharply over the last year. GDP's actually growing faster than a lot of forecasters expected. And all of that is true. Fitch actually acknowledges that the U.S. has a vibrant, diversified economy and a dollar that's the envy of the world. What the rating agency's concerned about, though, is policymaking here in Washington, whether we're talking about GOP tax cuts or democratic spending programs, and the apparent unwillingness of both parties to grapple with the long-term challenges of bankrolling entitlement programs. What does this practically mean, though, Scott? How does this downgrade affect the country's finances?

The practical effects may be pretty limited. The dollar did slip a bit overnight. Stock futures were down, but not dramatically. As the Treasury Secretary says, plenty of people are still willing to lend the government money, even if they are demanding higher interest rates now than they used to. After the last big debt limit showdown in 2011, another credit rating agency, S&P, also took away the government's AAA rating. There was some short-term fallout in the stock market, but it didn't really impede the government's ability to borrow money. The cost of borrowing is going up, though. In the first nine months of this fiscal year, the government spent $652 billion just on interest payments. That leaves less money

for everything else the government wants to do. And what would it take to restore the government's AAA bond rating? Well, Fitch says it would consider raising the bond rating again if the government were to grapple seriously with some of its long-term fiscal challenges. That might mean adjusting outlays, raising revenues, or some combination of the two. And Fitch also says it'd like to see a turnaround in the toxic governing environment. NPR's Scott Horsley. Thanks, Scott. You're welcome. And that's Up First for Wednesday, August 2nd. I'm Leila Faldin. And I'm Ian Martinez. Up First is produced by Katie Klein, Claire Murashima, and Lily Quiroz. Our editors are Krishnadev Kalamor, Emily Kopp, Rafael Nam, Ali Schweitzer, and Alice Wolfley. Our technical director is Zach Coleman with engineering support from Hannah Glovna.

Join us again tomorrow. And if you like your news on demand, check out the NPR One app. Get a mix of local, national, and international news wherever you go and whenever you want it. And hear podcasts based on what you like. Download NPR One. Thank you.