CNN’s resident Zoom masturbator is getting some mockery over this clip. I get why but I actually think it’s pretty revealing about just how badly the Rittenhouse trial is going for the prosecution.
What I see on Twitter are basically two camps of people reacting to this clip. The first camp is reacting to Toobin with disgust both because of his personal history and because they think his tone here is obnoxious. The second camp is mostly responding to the first camp by saying Toobin’s history is irrelevant or at least not comparable to two killing people.
Both groups have a point but also both groups seem to be missing the big take away here which is more important than the meta-argument about Toobin. He offers just two points in this brief clip. The first point is that he thinks Rittenhouse was an “idiot” for taking a gun to a riot. He expresses this in the most outrageous possible terms. It looks to me like a lot of hand-waving to signal to viewers that he shares their outrage over the case.
But point two is the more significant one coming from a professional legal analyst. “The good news for Kyle Rittenhouse is that he’s not on trial for being an idiot,” Toobin said. He continued, “He’s on trial for homicide and in that respect I mostly agree with Joey that this is a tough case for the prosecution because it does seem like he has a plausible case of self defense.” [emphasis added].
Jeffrey Toobin, who masturbated in front of his coworkers on a Zoom call, accuses Kyle Rittenhouse of being an idiot
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 10, 2021
Toobin isn’t the only analyst on CNN today arguing that things aren’t going well for the prosecution. After the judge in the case gave the prosecutor a tongue lashing today, analyst Paul Callan commented that “this prosecutor seems to have made an enemy of the judge.” Callan then explained the Wisconsin law that regulates “propensity evidence.”
The second half of this clip shows two more analysts reacting to that same moment. Civil Rights Attorney Areva Martin agrees that the prosecutor was “pushing the envelope.”
Bottom line, even CNN now seems willing to acknowledge that this trial is not looking like a slam dunk for the prosecution. That’s important because, based on what I’m seeing on Twitter, that message hasn’t gotten out to a lot of people who are firmly convinced Rittenhouse is guilty of murder and that only far-right kooks would suggest otherwise. I think, not unlike the Trayvon Martin case, the media has set up a lot of people for a potentially harsh confrontation with reality. Of course I don’t know how the trial will turn out next week or whenever the jury decides, but it might not be the way a lot of people expect.
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