Packing so many pontificating pundits onto the screen that they looked like a bargain bin Brady Bunch, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell took to her eponymous show on Tuesday to openly fret that former President Trump’s “opponents” might be suffering from “indictment fatigue” after the district attorney of Fulton County, GA indicted him for the fourth time. Of course, the crux of her concern was that the harm to Trump’s presidential campaign would be minimized.
Looking to New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker for reassurance, Mitchell wanted a plan to reduce the possible harm it did to their efforts to reelect President Joe Biden. “How do Trump opponents, Republican opponents as well as White House opponents, how do they break through indictment fatigue?” she asked.
She specifically wanted to about “How do they get voters not only energizing Democratic voters,” and “independents, swing voters, how do they get voters to focus on the substance of some of these indictments as many times as we use the word unprecedented?”
Baker lamented that “the unprecedented has become routine” and broke the bad news to Mitchell that “there's no question that the country has kind of gotten oddly accustom to it. It's, you know, another week, another indictment.”
Mitchell also likely didn’t want to hear what Baker said next, in that focus groups couldn’t distinguish between the different indictments and they were getting them all muddled together:
And I think that there is a fatigue factor at least the consultants tell us that they have seen, one consultant who does focus groups told me he hears voters -- for them, it's white noise. They can't really make a distinction between Jack Smith and Fani Willis and all these different cases. And they kind of tune it out. All they know is that Trump is in trouble and they come back to their pre-indictment views of him. Either they think he is being persecuted unfairly or they think he is a serial criminal who’s finally being brought to justice. And they’re not spending a lot of time on the details of it.
Giving Mitchell a little bit of a lifeline, Baker suggested there was still time for Republicans to get tired of it all and say “Okay, enough of that. I would like to move on [from Trump].”
Mitchell concluded by holding out hope that the televised nature of the courts in Georgia would help alleviate the fatigue. “Now, of course, this last one, if it comes into play, will be on camera, which is a big difference as well,” she said before ending the segment.
Andrea Mitchells fears of “indictment fatigue” were made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Chevy and HughesNet. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports
August 15, 2023
12:36:26 p.m. Eastern(…)
ANDREA MITCHELL: Peter Baker, how do Trump opponents, Republican opponents as well as White House opponents, how do they break through indictment fatigue? And how do they get voters not only energizing Democratic voters, but certainly maybe not MAGA base but independents, swing voters, how do they get voters to focus on the substance of some of these indictments as many times as we use the word unprecedented?
PETER BAKER: Yeah. We are in this bizarre moment, of course, where the unprecedented has become routine. Right? We have seen this four times already and there's no question that the country has kind of gotten oddly accustom to it. It's, you know, another week, another indictment. Oh here we go.
And I think that there is a fatigue factor at least the consultants tell us that they have seen, one consultant who does focus groups told me he hears voters -- for them, it's white noise. They can't really make a distinction between Jack Smith and Fani Willis and all these different cases. And they kind of tune it out. All they know is that Trump is in trouble and they come back to their pre-indictment views of him. Either they think he is being persecuted unfairly or they think he is a serial criminal who’s finally being brought to justice. And they’re not spending a lot of time on the details of it.
A lot of people thought these indictments -- if there was going to be an indictment, that would really pull him down politically. That obviously turned out to be not true, even for – so far it doesn’t seem to be doing it at least within the Republican base.
The question is whether what we talked about earlier with all of the trials and everything, eventually just weighs down -- even Republicans who like him say, “Okay, enough of that. I would like to move on” like Jeff Duncan and Ken Buck just told you.
MITCHELL: Now, of course, this last one, if it comes into play, will be on camera, which is a big difference as well.
