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Former President Donald Trump has uttered multiple false or misleading claims about his Manhattan criminal trial this week as the trial has neared a conclusion. Here is a fact check of some of the statements Trump has made on social media and to reporters from Tuesday to Thursday morning.

Merchan and the ‘advice of counsel’

After closing arguments Tuesday, Trump posted on social media to repeat his misleading complaint that Judge Juan Merchan has prevented him from employing a certain defense.

Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social: “THE GREATEST CASE I’VE EVER SEEN FOR RELIANCE ON COUNSEL, AND JUDGE MERCHAN WILL NOT, FOR WHATEVER REASON, LET ME USE THAT AS A DEFENSE IN THIS RIGGED TRIAL. ANOTHER TERM, ADVICE OF COUNSEL DEFENSE!” He added in another post on Wednesday morning: “RELIANCE ON COUNSEL (ADVISE OF COUNSEL) NOT ALLOWED BY MERCHAN, A FIRST.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim remains misleading. He didn’t mention, again, that the reason Merchan will not allow Trump’s legal team to invoke “advice of counsel” during the trial is that, when Trump was asked before the trial whether he would be using an “advice of counsel” defense, his lawyers told Merchan he would not.

An “advice of counsel” defense typically requires the defendant to waive attorney-client privilege. Trump’s lawyers told Merchan before the trial that instead of a “formal” defense of “advice of counsel,” Trump wanted to use a different defense in which he would not waive attorney-client privilege but would still “elicit evidence concerning the presence, involvement and advice of lawyers in relevant events giving rise to the charges in the Indictment.”

Merchan rejected this proposal. He wrote in March: “To allow said defense in this matter would effectively permit Defendant to invoke the very defense he has declared he will not rely upon, without the concomitant obligations that come with it. The result would undoubtedly be to confuse and mislead the jury. This Court can not endorse such a tactic.” Therefore, Merchan ruled, Trump could not invoke or even suggest a “presence of counsel” defense in the trial.

Last week, during courtroom discussions about Merchan’s instructions to the jury, Merchan rejected an attempt by Trump’s defense to invoke the “involvement of counsel.” Merchan noted he had already made his stance on the proposal clear.

Merchan said: “This is an argument that you’ve been advancing for many, many, many, months. This is something you’ve been trying to get through to the jury for many, many, many months. It’s denied, it’s not going to happen, please don’t raise it again.”

Merchan and jury unanimity

Trump claimed Wednesday that Merchan “is not requiring a unanimous decision on the fake charges against me.”

Trump made the claim in a social media post in which he described Merchan’s supposed position as “RIDICULOUS, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, AND UNAMERICAN.” He was echoing assertions that had been circulating among conservatives after Fox News anchor John Roberts wrote on social media earlier on Wednesday that “Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim inaccurately depicts what Merchan said.

Merchan told the jury in his instructions on Wednesday that their verdict “must be unanimous” on each of the 34 counts that Trump faces and that, to convict Trump of felony falsification of business records, they have to unanimously agree that he falsified business records with the intent to commit, aid or conceal another crime – that other crime being a violation of a New York election law. But Merchan explained that while this New York election law prohibits people from conspiring to use “unlawful means” to promote a candidate’s election, jurors don’t have to unanimously agree on which particular “unlawful means” Trump may have used; they can find him guilty as long as they unanimously agree that Trump used some unlawful means. Prosecutors provided three theories of what unlawful means Trump used.

Merchan told the jury: “Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were. In determining whether the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you may consider the following: one, violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act otherwise known as FECA; two, the falsification of other business records; or three, violation of tax laws.”

Lee Kovarsky, a University of Texas law professor who has been following the trial, put it this way on social media on Wednesday: “If a law says NO VEHICLES IN THE PARK & list of vehicles includes mopeds and motorcycles, all the instruction means is that you need unanimous conclusion of vehicle but not unanimous on whether vehicle was moped or harley.”

– CNN’s Jeremy Herb contributed to this item.

The charges against Trump

After Merchan recited his instructions to the jury on Wednesday, Trump wrote on social media: “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE CHARGES ARE IN THIS RIGGED CASE—I AM ENTITLED TO SPECIFICITY JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE.
THERE IS NO CRIME!”

Facts First: This needs context. Less than two hours before Trump made this post claiming he doesn’t even know what the charges are, Merchan had explained each of the 34 charges during his jury instructions in the courtroom – with Trump present. 

We can’t definitively fact-check what Trump actually knows about the charges, and even some legal analysts have said this case can be a difficult one to understand. But there is no basis for any suggestion that the charges have not been specified.

Merchan had told the jury, “I will now instruct you on the law applicable to the charged offenses. That offense is Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree – 34 Counts.” He then explained how the crime of first-degree falsifying business records is defined in New York law, further explained the definitions of particular words in that law, and then, one by one, identified each of the 34 business records that make up the 34 counts.

The 34 counts were also specified in Trump’s indictment in the case more than a year ago.

The judge and a possible witness

Trump claimed to reporters on Wednesday that Merchan had refused to allow Trump’s defense to call a leading election-law expert to testify.

“This judge didn’t even let us use the number-one election attorney,” Trump said. He continued moments later, “We had the leading election expert in the country, Brad Smith, ready to testify. Wouldn’t let him do it.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Merchan did not prohibit this potential witness, former Federal Election Commission chairman Bradley Smith, from testifying. Rather, Merchan limited what Smith was allowed to testify about. He decided in March that Smith could provide background information about the FEC and define certain terms relevant to this case but could not opine on whether Trump broke federal election laws or offer opinions about how to interpret or apply those laws. After Merchan refused last week to change his mind, Trump’s defense decided not to call Smith as a witness. 

Smith wrote on social media last week: “Judge Merchan has so restricted my testimony that defense has decided not to call me.”

Trump could argue that Merchan’s decision to restrict Smith’s testimony rendered Smith useless as a witness. But his assertion that Merchan flat-out banned Smith from testifying is not true.

Biden and the case

After the jury began deliberations on Wednesday, Trump spoke repeated his frequent claim that this case was “all done by Joe Biden.” And on Thursday morning, he claimed that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had revived the case during Trump’s campaign “at the request of Biden.”

Facts First: There is no basis for Trump’s claim. There is no evidence that Biden had any role in launching or running Bragg’s prosecution – and Bragg is a locally elected official who does not report to the federal government. The indictment in the case was approved by a grand jury of ordinary citizens.

Trump has repeatedly invoked a lawyer on Bragg’s team, Matthew Colangelo, while making such claims; Colangelo left the Justice Department in 2022 to join the district attorney’s office as senior counsel to Bragg.

But there is no evidence that Biden had anything to do with Colangelo’s employment decision. Colangelo and Bragg had been colleagues before Bragg was elected Manhattan district attorney in 2021.

Before Colangelo worked at the Justice Department, he and Bragg worked at the same time in the office of New York’s state attorney general, where Colangelo investigated Trump’s charity and Trump’s financial practices and was involved in bringing various lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Rebecca Beitsch, Rafael Bernal, and The Hill

3 weeks ago

President Biden lost his patience with former President Trump’s falsehoods on immigration in Thursday’s debate, after trying to direct the topic toward the failed bipartisan Senate border deal.

“Everything he says is a lie,” Biden said during the event held by CNN in Atlanta. “Every single one.”

Biden’s pivot came as Trump repeated a litany of falsehoods on immigration, based on the idea that the Biden administration purposefully opened the border.

“He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists,” Trump said.

Trump also leaned into making a link between crime and immigration — a key claim for Republicans ahead of November’s election — making a generalized assessment of immigration based on isolated crimes.

Most research has shown the presence of immigrants tends to lower crime rates because immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens.

A Cato Institute paper published Wednesday confirmed prior research that immigrants on average commit fewer murders than natural-born citizens.

The paper analyzed Texas Department of Public Safety data and found the conviction rate for immigrants lacking documentation in the state was lower than the rate for natural-born citizens every year from 2013 to 2022.

Trump said the United States had become a “rat’s nest” and added that “we have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now, all terrorists, all over the world, not just in South America, all over the world,” Trump said.

He disparaged Biden’s claim that Congress should act to give the executive greater powers and resources to control the border, arguing that “he didn’t need legislation, because I didn’t have legislation, I said close the border.”

Trump also compared migrant living conditions — which he falsely labeled as “luxury hotels” — to conditions for unhoused veterans.

“He has killed so many people at our border by allowing all of these people to come in, and it’s a very sad day in America,” Trump said.

That’s when Biden lost his patience, delivering one of his strongest lines in a debate that started shaky for the president.

“Everything he says is a lie. Every single one,” Biden said.

But Biden segued to respond to Trump’s quip about veterans, dropping the immigration topic.

Trump, however, did not let the topic go. He raised immigration or the border in response to most other questions.

This story originally appeared on NPR.

If some people who listened to the radio in 1960 thought Richard Nixon won the presidential debate with John F. Kennedy, then maybe people reading the transcript of Thursday night’s match-up would think President Biden won.

Maybe.

But elections aren’t won in transcripts. The reality is, fairly or not, debates are often about optics — how the candidates present themselves, defend their records and parry attacks.

And that’s why so many Democrats are ringing the fire alarms after the first general-election presidential debate of 2024. The Biden campaign said the president had a cold to explain why he sounded so hoarse and weak. But Biden’s stumbles right from the beginning played into his biggest vulnerability — his age and whether the 81-year-old is up to the challenge of handling four more years in office.

There were issues for Trump, too, as he continued to spread falsehoods and bathe in the kinds of conspiratorial grievances that have turned off many voters.

Not much has changed the dynamics of this race; will anything that happened Thursday night make a difference either?

Here are four takeaways from the first Biden-Trump debate of this campaign:

1. First and foremost, let’s talk about the elephant in the room – Democrats have to be wondering if they’d be better off with someone else as their nominee

Neither candidate is the official nominee yet. The national political conventions haven’t happened — but it’s next to impossible that Democrats would replace Biden.

Still, given he delivered the kind of performance Democrats feared, party leaders, strategists and many voters, frankly, had to be wondering during this debate what it would be like if any of a handful of other Democrats were standing on that stage.

Biden got a bit stronger as the debate went on, especially on foreign policy. He had some one-liners, like calling Trump a “whiner” when Trump wouldn’t definitively say that he would accept the results of the 2024 election. But Biden often wasn’t able to show vigor or consistently convey what he wanted to say. He simply couldn’t deliver the kinds of happy-warrior blows with that toothy smile audiences have seen from Biden in years past.

“Sometimes the spin don’t spin,” one Democratic strategist texted midway through the debate when asked for reaction.

2. If how Biden sounded wasn’t bad enough, the visuals might have been equally as bad

An important rule of thumb for candidates — and moderators — in debates is to be conscious of how things look, of how you look, of what people are seeing at home. And what people saw — and this was predictable — was a split screen.

Biden wasn’t able to use that to his advantage at all, even as Trump doled out falsehood after falsehood. Instead, he looked genuinely shocked and confused, which is never a good look.

Trump and his base might not care about Saturday Night Live, but Biden’s base does. And this week’s cold open won’t be pretty.

What a busy week. What a busy day.

Monday was the start of the Republican National Convention. Donald Trump officially secured the Republican nomination for president. Trump selected Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to be his running mate. And, of course, we’re still trying to piece together all the events of Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania last weekend when a gunman fired shots that grazed the former president and killed one rallygoer.

But we start with NBC News’ interview with President Joe Biden that aired in its entirety — and, according to the network, unedited — Monday night.

There wasn’t a ton of new news to come out of it, but it wasn’t uneventful either. A defiant Biden pushed back against interviewer Lester Holt several times, and once again made it clear that he plans to stay in the race.

As far as Holt goes, it was an overall effective but occasionally spotty performance by the “Nightly News” anchor.

He did ask some pertinent questions: about the apparent assassination attempt on Trump, law enforcement’s performance at the Trump rally, the current divisive political climate in this country and Biden’s political future.

Holt asked if Biden feels that he has “weathered the storm” in terms of calls for him to step out of the race. He pressed Biden on whether he watched the debate, which led to one of Biden’s better moments when he said, “I didn’t have to see it. I was there!” He also called it a “bad, bad night.” And he even admitted the obvious: “I’m old.”

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin tweeted, “As interviews go, Holt is doing a cruddy job. Arguing over minutiae.”

That’s not unfair criticism. Holt interrupted Biden on more than one occasion while Biden was on topic in his answer and pressed him to answer questions that he already answered or, frankly, that didn’t seem all that important to answer.

Biden tangled with Holt several times, such as when Holt pressed Biden on his debate performance.

Biden leaned forward and said, “Lester, look, why don’t you guys ever talk about the 28 lies he told? Where — where are you on this? Why doesn’t the press ever talk about that? Twenty-eight times, it’s confirmed, he lied in that debate.”

Biden’s point seemed to be that the post-debate conversation has been almost exclusively about Biden’s performance and not about Trump. Although, to be fair, Biden had the opportunity at the debate to call out Trump’s lies, so to blame the media later might not be the best approach.

Biden closed the 18-minute interview by saying, “Sometime come and talk to me about what we should be talking about, OK? The issues.”

Holt could’ve asked more questions about policy and so forth, but to his credit, he did hit on many of the questions that were on the minds of those who tuned in to watch. And, one would assume, the questions changed drastically considering the events at the Trump rally.

So how did it all play out? NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie asked a smart question of MSNBC (and former Biden press secretary) Jen Psaki on air when she asked if Biden calmed Democratic concerns about his candidacy or prompted more doubts.

Psaki said, “It’s really hard to know in this moment.”

Psaki pointed out that the backdrop of the interview “massively changed” between the time Biden agreed last week to sit down with Holt and when he actually did sit down with him. What happened, of course, was the shooting at Trump’s rally on Saturday. The interview that was supposed to largely be about Biden’s political future also became about the political climate in this country.

Biden went through with the interview and Psaki said, “To me, that means the president — and you saw this in the interview — wants to continue to lay that contrast with Trump on who is going to represent and fight for democracy better. And he didn’t hold back when Lester Holt pushed him on that particular subject.”

Trump picked his running mate Monday: It’s 39-year-old Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who once called Trump “reprehensible” and “cultural heroin” — adding, “He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.” Vance wrote in a 2016 New York Times op-ed, “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”

But he, obviously, has since changed his stance on Trump, backing Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, among other Trump beliefs and policies. Trump called Vance the “person best suited” to be his running mate.

There are already tons of stories out there about Vance, and many will be coming in the days ahead. But a good place to start is his interview with The New York Times’ Ross Douthat from last month. It’s a lengthy and insightful look into Vance and his views of Trump and American politics.

Douthat wrote in his introduction, “The Vance of eight years ago was read with appreciation and gratitude by Trump opponents looking for a window into populism. The Vance of today is despised and feared by many of the same kind of people. His transformation is one of the most striking political stories of the Trump era, and one that’s likely to influence Republican politics even after Trump is gone.”

Former President Donald Trump at the first day of the Republican National Convention on Monday in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

As the Republican National Convention was getting underway Monday, Gabriel Sherman wrote a piece in Vanity Fair about those in Trump’s inner circle who have noticed a change in the former president since he was the target of an apparent assassination attempt last Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. And that so-called change could lead to a different tone at the RNC.

Sherman wrote, “The Trump campaign is racing to reprogram the convention. What was originally going to be a four-day rage-fest is being positioned as a post-shooting showcase for unity.”

Sherman said one Republican source told him, “Trump put the word out that he doesn’t want any talk of revenge or retaliation in speeches or anywhere else.

On his flight to Milwaukee on Sunday, Trump told reporters that he is rewriting his nomination speech, saying, “I basically had a speech that was an unbelievable rip-roarer. It was brutal — really good, really tough. I threw it out.”

So, wait, is Trump now a changed man, at least in terms of his rhetoric and public approach?

Sherman wrote, “The fundamental question for the election, of course, is whether Trump has actually changed. Is his chastening a short-term response to a near-death experience? Or is it smart politics? Would a reformed Trump replace his extreme policies with a moderate agenda? And would Trump, who has spoken ominously of seeking vengeance and retribution if elected, suddenly temper those dark impulses? These are valid questions. Numerous times in the past, Trump modulated his tone to seem more ‘presidential,’ only to revert to his demagogic instincts. But the sources who spoke with Trump in private say he truly seems like a different man.”

Something to keep an eye on at this week’s RNC — and beyond.

Late Monday night, NBC News’ Matt Dixon, Allan Smith and Katherine Doyle wrote, “Republican convention aims for unity — but keeps some of the old red meat.” They wrote, “Most speakers stuck to the night’s theme — ‘Make America Wealthy Again’ — but interspersed through the night were mentions of the shooting and rhetoric that, at times, contradicted Trump’s own calls for unity.”

Trump, by the way, appeared at Monday’s first night of the convention wearing a bandage on his right ear.

Louis Jacobson of Poynter’s PolitiFact is in Milwaukee for this week’s Republican National Convention, and he filed this item.

U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., blasted the media for its coverage of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. After her July 15 speech at the Florida delegation breakfast, Cammack thanked a TV reporter who was interviewing her for using the term “attempted assassination.”

“Members of the liberal media said (Trump) fell or that there were loud noises,” Cammack said.

This is a common talking point in conservative media. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., criticized initial headlines from CNN and other outlets that left out unconfirmed details of the shooting. “Really? No mention of the attempt to kill him?” Rubio posted about a CNN X post that said Trump was “rushed off stage by Secret Service” (and included a photo of Trump raising his fist).

This lacks context about journalistic procedure. Journalists are trained to report what they see personally or what they can confirm with official sources; they are not supposed to speculate.

In the chaotic moments after the shooting, reporters on site knew they had heard a loud noise and saw that the Secret Service moved Trump to safety. But in the confusion, it was impossible to immediately know precisely what had happened. Journalists are taught to proceed slowly and accurately rather than being speedy and wrong.

As soon as officials confirmed that there had been a shooting and that Trump was injured, media outlets began reporting that.

A day later and I’m still trying to make sense of this story. MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was not on the air Monday morning — the first day of the Republican National Convention and what would have been the first show since the shooting at the Trump rally on Saturday.

In fact, the official reason “Morning Joe” was preempted was because of continuing coverage of the apparent assassination attempt on Trump.

In a statement, an MSNBC spokesperson said, “Given the gravity and complexity of this unfolding story, NBC News, NBC News NOW and MSNBC have remained in rolling breaking news coverage since Saturday evening. As we continue to cover this story into the week, the networks will continue to cross simulcast, alternating between NBC News, NBC News NOW and ‘MSNBC Reports’, so there is one news feed covering this developing situation.”

However, CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy reported, “A person familiar with the matter told CNN that the decision was made to avoid a scenario in which one of the show’s stable of two dozen-plus guests might make an inappropriate comment on live television that could be used to assail the program and network as a whole. Given the breaking news nature of the story, the person said, it made more sense to continue airing rolling breaking news coverage in the fraught political moment.”

Darcy also wrote, “Cesar Conde, the chairman of NBCUniversal News Group, made the decision in conjunction with Rashida Jones, the president of MSNBC, and hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the person familiar with the matter told CNN.”

MSNBC denied the CNN report.

But something just doesn’t add up here. “Morning Joe” is one of MSNBC’s signature programs with a dedicated audience. After such a major story as the events at the Trump rally, as well as the start of the RNC, Monday’s “Morning Joe” should have been appointment viewing for MSNBC. To say it was preempted over a news story that was some 36 hours old at that point just doesn’t make sense. What, “Morning Joe” couldn’t pass along breaking news should there be any? And don’t “Morning Joe” viewers want to hear what the show has to say?

No question that “Morning Joe” has been highly critical of the former president, and has been sounding the alarm of what another Trump presidency might look like. But are we really to believe that executives couldn’t put the word out to all hosts and guests that they need to be especially careful with their word choices and to be respectful of what happened Saturday night in Pennsylvania? Plus, the show is going to be back on the air this morning, meaning any insensitive comments made today would be every bit as inappropriate as if they had been said on Monday.

Yet, clearly, there was a reason “Morning Joe” wasn’t on.

Odd. The whole thing is just odd.

Former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally last Saturday in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Donald Trump was speaking at a rally near Pittsburgh last Saturday evening when, as you now know, there was a major development. A gunman fired at the stage, hitting Trump in the ear and killing a man who was attending the rally. This happened a little after 6 p.m. Eastern time.

Yet, for many Americans, the news was not in the print edition of their Sunday newspaper. How can that be?

Tampa Bay Times’ executive editor Mark Katches wrote a piece for the Times, saying, “It is a fair question.”

The Tampa Bay Times, which is owned by Poynter, prints just twice a week — Wednesday and Sunday — and the paper is printed at a plant in Lakeland, Florida, about 55 miles from the paper’s main office in St. Petersburg. So deadlines on Saturday evening are early. The Times sent the last page off to the Lakeland printing plant on Saturday at about 4:49 p.m. — an hour and a half before the shooting at the Trump rally.

Katches wrote about the Times, but he could have been speaking about many papers all across the country.

Katches wrote that it’s the first time since the papers started printing in Lakeland in 2021 that Times editors yelled out the famous newspaper phrase: “Stop the presses!”

But it wasn’t simple. The first Associated Press alert moved at 6:45 p.m. and very little was known about what had happened at the rally. Details, at best, were sketchy.

Katches wrote, “We went about remaking the front page to catch as many of the printed papers as possible. Even when the presses stop, time marches on. We pushed to get the news out as soon as possible to resume the press run. Instead of remaking multiple pages, which would have taken considerably longer, we removed the centerpiece photograph on a story about heat exposure at summer camps and prepared to substitute a photo from the Associated Press in Pennsylvania. By then, most of the printed newspapers were already off the presses, set to be sorted and prepared for delivery trucks for the drive back to Tampa Bay.”

In the end, the new front page — with a photo of Trump surrounded by Secret Service agents and blood on his cheek — caught about 12,000 papers, which is just a fraction of the Times’ print circulation. The only text was a caption under the photo that directed readers to the Times’ website for more coverage.

Katches wrote, “I commend the newsroom for doing what we could under the circumstances. But in hindsight, you always wonder if we could have done more. Some readers who didn’t get the final edition in print accused us of deliberate bias for ignoring a huge news story. Some who did get the remade front page still felt we underplayed such consequential news. It’s a legitimate criticism without the context of early print deadlines and a ticking clock.”

Let me just add one more thought to this. I grew up with newspapers — both reading them and then working at them. But this is 2024. Are people still really expecting breaking news to be in the print edition of a newspaper? Even if we still lived in an age of late deadlines, just imagine how much new information might come out between when a story was filed for print publication and when readers actually read their newspapers several hours later.

Many older generations still read newspapers. I get that. But it also must be acknowledged that the internet, not a print newspaper, is where most news consumers get — and should be getting — their up-to-date information.

But it’s good that Katches explained what happened, especially to those who might think the media simply chose to not cover the shooting.

My colleague, Poynter media business analyst Rick Edmonds, reports more about this topic for Poynter this morning in “Many print readers looking for Sunday coverage of the assassination attempt found ‘zippo’.”

CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Brian Fung and Marshall Cohen have an excellent new piece out: “Conspiracy theories spread wildly after the first assassination attempt on a US president in the social media age.”

They write that the shooting at the Trump rally had barely happened when the internet was flooded with all kinds of stories: “The moments of uncertainty created an information void that was quickly filled by speculation, misinformation and conspiracy theories. At the same time, the social media industry has broadly retreated from efforts to clamp down on misinformation. That retrenchment left the door wide open for false and misleading claims by both Trump supporters and opponents.”

And why does it matter that a bunch of knuckleheads spread misinformation on social media?

Well, the CNN writers explain, “The ease at which false rumors and conspiracy theories rapidly spread on social media threatens the public’s ability to sort truth from fiction. It sometimes influences their behavior and further divides an already fractured America. The deluge of disinformation surrounding the Trump shooting shows, once again, that this problem isn’t going away anytime soon. With less than four months until Election Day, the leading social media platforms appear resigned to let the status quo fester.”

A sports stunner: Skip Bayless, the bombastic host of FS1’s “Undisputed,” is leaving the show and the network later this summer, according to the New York Post’s Ryan Glasspiegel.

After a successful stint alongside Stephen A. Smith at ESPN, Bayless left for FS1 and “Undisputed” eight years ago. Andrew Marchand reported in 2021 that Bayless had signed a four-year deal with FS1 worth $32 million. But while Bayless has been a well-known figure among sports media, the show really didn’t do that well in the ratings, especially of late.

A year ago, his “Undisputed” partner Shannon Sharpe left the program after he and Bayless had friction. After Sharpe left, the program went on hiatus and then returned with a rotating cast of sidekicks for Bayless, but the show really hasn’t found any footing.

Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy tweeted, “Skip Bayless was reduced to 50K viewers some days while competing with his former partner Stephen A. Smith. Fox is not going to pay him $6 to $8 million for that.”

There will be more on this story in the days to come.

• For The Washington Post, Paul Farhi with “How the media’s wait for the facts in Trump shooting fed a backlash.”
• Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop with “The cynicism of blaming the media for the Trump assassination attempt.”
• For New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait with “The Democratic Party’s Strange Attraction to Defeatism.”
• For Rolling Stone, Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng with “Trump Allies Try to Bully Dems, Media to Shut Up About His Fascist Plans.”
• Chuck Todd’s latest column for NBC News: “The nation faces a stern test amid an election mired in whataboutism.” Todd writes, “The online political debate has turned almost purely into an exercise in whataboutism. The hard partisans want to believe they are righteous while pointing to the other side as the ones fomenting a violent atmosphere. Many hard partisans refuse to accept that their rhetoric has contributed to the dark atmospherics of today’s politics, noticing only the ugly rhetoric of their political foes. The fact is that we’ve all let political rhetoric get overheated in a fragmented information ecosystem in which the algorithms reward outrage and rhetoric that dehumanizes those we disagree with.”
• The Wall Street Journal’s ​​Tim Higgins with “Shots Fired, Elon Musk Heard a Call: Donald Trump.”
• Then came this breaking story Monday as The Wall Street Journal’s Dana Mattioli, Emily Glazer and Khadeeja Safdar wrote, “Elon Musk Has Said He Is Committing Around $45 Million a Month to a New Pro-Trump Super PAC.”
• A few days old: Analysis from The Washington Post’s Andrew Van Dam in “Wait, does America really still employ a ton of news reporters?”
• Longtime Houston columnist Ken Hoffman has died. Here are details from the Houston Chronicle’s Claire Hao. And Chron’s Brittanie Shey has more.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected].

The Poynter Report is our daily media newsletter. To have it delivered to your inbox Monday-Friday, sign up here.

Former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell is mostly recovered from the brutal assaults he endured from Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. But not completely. His shoulder still has limited endurance and there are screws and a metal plate holding his right foot together after bone fusion surgery.

Emotional recovery has been more difficult. Gonell struggled when he heard that former Trump visited Capitol Hill last month and received what he called a “hero’s welcome” from the Republican lawmakers Gonell had protected that day, and when Trump falsely told millions of viewers in last week’s debate that many of the violent rioters, his supporters, “were ushered in by the police.”

Trump’s Capitol Hill visit was a “triggering mechanism for my PTSD,” says Gonell, who retired from the force in 2022 due to his injuries and has recently participated in several campaign events for President Joe Biden. “We did what we had to do to keep those elected officials safe, and instead of siding with us, the officers, they have sided with a person who put their lives at risk.”

Three and a half years after the Capitol attack, Trump still falsely claims the 2020 election was stolen. He has promised that if he wins the presidency again he will pardon his supporters who violently beat police and broke into the Capitol to try and overturn the legitimate results. To counter the misinformation, Gonell and two of his fellow officers who were there that day are working with Biden’s campaign, attending events in swing states to try and make sure that voters don’t forget.

“I’m a living primary source about an important day in American history,” says Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who became a recognizable face shortly after the attack when a video of him being crushed between two doors went viral. “So I try to make that count, and make it so that people hear the truth from someone who was there.”

Along with former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, Hodges and Gonell are telling audiences about what they went through that day and trying to lay out the contrast between Biden and Trump. It’s an unusual transition for law enforcement officers who once protected members of Congress and are used to keeping their political views to themselves.

“I’m really an introvert, and I’m not someone to seek a microphone or an audience,” says Hodges, who testified along with Gonell and Dunn at the House Jan. 6 panel’s first hearing in 2021. “But I’m in this unique position where people will listen to what I say about an important issue. So I feel a moral obligation to do so.”

At recent events in Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, they stood with local officials and said that Trump is a danger to the country after trying to overturn Biden’s legitimate election.

“Three and a half years later, the fight for democracy still continues,” Dunn recently told a group of voters in Arizona, flanked by a handful of politically active Democratic veterans in Phoenix. “It still goes on. Donald Trump is still that threat. His deranged, self-centered, obsessive quest for power is the reason violent insurrectionists assaulted my coworkers and I.”

The officers have also aggressively pushed back on Trump’s comments at the debate, where he falsely said that there were a “relatively small” group of protesters and that the police let them enter the Capitol. More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot, and police were bloodied and injured — some seriously — as they struggled to prevent more from getting in.

Dunn, who recently lost his own bid for a congressional seat in Maryland, said after the debate that Trump’s comments were “a slap in the face, but it’s what we have come to expect from Donald Trump.”

And the officers said they are still supporting Biden, even after he failed to push back on many of Trump’s false claims about Jan. 6 and received widespread criticism for his weak showing at the debate.

“He could have been a little more forceful, but I’ll take the person who doesn’t send a mob to kill me and my colleagues over the other person,” said Gonell, who published a book last year about his experience. “Every single day I’m reminded of that horrible day. Every time I put my shoes on, I see my scar.”

Gonell was caught in the worst of the fighting on the Capitol’s west front as Trump’s supporters protesting his defeat violently tried to push past him and his fellow officers. At one point he was pulled under the crowd and lost oxygen to the point that he thought he would die.

Hodges was nearby, trapped in the heavy golden doors in the center of the Capitol’s west front as rioters beat him bloody. A video of his guttural scream as he tried to escape went viral and was played at Democrats’ impeachment trial in the weeks after the attack.

Dunn, who has said he was targeted with racial slurs by Trump’s supporters during the fighting, says it has been good to travel out of the Washington area, his hometown, and talk to people who may not be watching cable news every day as he campaigns for Biden. There’s a lot they don’t know about what happened on Jan. 6, he says.

“Being able to have somebody who was there bring firsthand experience and facts retelling the story, it’s very beneficial,” Dunn said,

The officers were widely praised after Jan. 6, but their criticism of Trump in recent years has made them less popular with some Republicans. When Gonell and Dunn visited the Pennsylvania legislature this spring, some Republicans booed them.

But they are unbowed by the criticism, and have continued to try and bring more attention to their stories. Gonell was outside the Supreme Court on Monday as the justices ruled on whether Trump has immunity for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and criticized the justices for sending the federal case back to a lower court. The decision effectively ends any prospects that Trump could be tried before the November election.

On Friday, the court limited a federal obstruction law that has been used to charge some Capitol riot defendants.

“Every single time that the Supreme Court or any other court says that some of these people shouldn’t be held accountable, it’s a disgrace,” Gonell said.