If there are bragging rights associated with Donald Trump praising your legal acumen when he speaks after a day’s testimony at his criminal trial, Fox News analyst Andy McCarthy has already been cited at least a dozen times.
The former president and current presidential candidate has routinely stepped to a metal barricade outside the courtroom in lower Manhattan to face cameras and get the last word on the day’s proceedings. As the trial has wound down, his speeches — he rarely acknowledges shouted questions — more frequently consist of reading the words of friendly commentators from a sheaf of papers.
Besides McCarthy, a former Manhattan prosecutor and writer for National Review, Fox commentators Jonathan Turley, Gregg Jarrett and Mark Levin get frequent shoutouts.
“Every legal scholar says, `They don’t have a case,’” Trump has said more than once while reading back supportive quotes.
McCarthy, quoted by the former president three separate times on May 13, is a “great analyst,” Trump said. Some favorites get personal praise: Byron York is “a great person, great reporter.” Alan Dershowitz is similarly “a great person,” Trump said. Occasionally, someone from CNN slips in. MSNBC gets the silent treatment.
For television, New York’s ban on cameras in the courtroom means plenty of airtime for legal analysts. It evokes the high point of the form three decades ago, when the O.J. Simpson murder trial made household names of the likes of Jeffrey Toobin, Nancy Grace and Greta Van Susteren. Fox’s Jarrett, who worked at Court TV in the 1990s, straddles the eras.
