BBC correspondent and MSNBC contributor Katty Kay is perplexed why 2024 presidential frontrunner and freshly convicted Donald Trump is allowed to exercise his free speech rights.  During a morning chat on MSNBC, this week, the bespectacled and bewildered Brit asked the network's legal analyst to explain "how is it that Donald Trump can stand outside the courtroom and say the system was rigged, this was a sham trial, it was a corrupt judge?"  After nearly two decades covering US politics from inside the Beltway, Kay was able to venture a "guess" that "it's a free speech issue."  Indeed, the same First Amendment that protects Trump's bombast protects cable news babble.

As usual, when it comes to Trump, partisanship trumps principle in the mainstream press.  Only a few summers ago, the media was aflame with denunciations of a systemically corrupt legal system that persecutes disfavored groups.  Now that the Orange Menace of Mar A Lago has been caught in its maw, justice demands blind devotion.  Bill Lueders, editor-at-large of The Progressive magazine, declares, "The presumption must be that the [Trump] verdict is legitimate."  Los Angeles Times news and culture critic Lorraine Ali warns that "pitting the people against the legal system isn’t just a disingenuous move, it’s dangerous."  Chicago Tribune columnist Sabrina Haake wildly compares Trump to "a man blaming his wife as he kicks her down the stairs."  Time for group therapy.