At 5:06 p.m. Thursday, moments after NBC News broke with a special report by Savannah Guthrie and Lester Holt informing viewers that a verdict would soon be handed down in the first criminal trial of a U.S. president, the suspense was suddenly shed onto the radio airwaves after weeks of dramatic testimony that had no cameras in the courtroom and little impact on television.
“Oh, come on, let's go,” Ms. Guthrie said suddenly. In the background, the off-camera voice of NBC senior legal reporter Laura Jarrett could be heard. “Guys! We've got to go,” Ms. Jarrett said. “We've got to go.”
“Go ahead,” Mr. Guthrie urged. The camera cut to Mr. Jarrett outside a Manhattan courthouse, where, over the next 87 mesmerizing seconds, he read out each charge, one by one, followed by the same two-syllable verdict.
“Guilty.”
Major television hosts rattled off the verdicts of former President Donald J. Trump with the rapid-fire cadences of an auctioneer. “Count 1, guilty. Count 2, guilty. Count 3, guilty,” MSNBC legal correspondent Ari Melber boomed as a solemn Rachel Maddow took notes on a notepad beside him. An on-air graphic displayed the final score: Guilty 34, Not Guilty 0.
It was a gripping moment that TV-savvy Trump himself might have enjoyed had he not been the subject of it. “This is a remarkable moment in American history,” Anderson Cooper said on CNN reporting the news.
But the announcement of the ruling immediately sparked widely divergent reactions in partisan cable news outlets.
“Something is very wrong. America has fallen off a cliff,” said Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host and longtime Trump supporter. She called the case “riddled with mistakes” and slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the judge for what she called a politically motivated prosecution. “God help America, given what we've seen over the last few weeks,” she said.
Another Fox News host, Trey Gowdy, had already primed viewers to be skeptical of a guilty verdict by calling the instructions given to the jury “pro-prosecutor.” A top headline on FoxNews.com mixed news of the guilty verdict with Trump's accusation that the trial had been “rigged” and a “disgrace.”
The mood was different on MSNBC.
“This is a conclusive and irreversible verdict,” Maddow said, warning that the US faces a “test” of whether Trump “has undermined the rule of law so much that the American people can reject it as a legitimate function of our rule of law.” She said the jury “deserves to be thanked for its efforts and protected from the attacks and accusations that the president and his allies have sought to bring into this trial.”
“The rule of law is immortal,” host Nicolle Wallace said, repeating Maddow's earlier comments. “The rule of law needs to be upheld. It's not an abstraction.”
Other presenters also emphasized the historic significance of the day. “To hear the word 'guilty' not just once but 34 times about a former president of the United States, under any circumstances, is completely uncharted territory,” CBS correspondent Major Garrett said. “This is a moment that shakes up everything about politics and the law and our attitudes toward both like never before.”
CNN's Jake Tapper declared the day “an incredible moment in American history,” while acknowledging that it was largely unclear immediately how the ruling would affect this year's presidential election.
“To those wondering what the political ramifications of these 34 convictions are, the short answer is no one knows,” Tapper said. “That's it.”
Fox News employs several of Trump's top media figures and is often looked to as a gauge for how the former president's supporters react to adverse news. Anchor Shannon Bream led the network's coverage of the ruling, followed by chief political anchor Bret Baier. Several conservative commentators from “The Five” offered comments just after 5:30 p.m.
Far from criticizing the jury's verdict, host Greg Gutfeld said he thought it favored Trump. “Americans love stories about one man in a bind taking on a corrupt system,” he said. “They just gave Popeye a gallon of spinach.”
Co-star Jesse Watters agreed: “I expected to be angry, but instead I was met with a sense of calm resignation,” Watters said. “We are going to rise up. We are going to take back our power. And we are going to defeat the evil forces that are destroying our republic.”
By the time the evening programming began at 7 p.m., less than two hours after the verdict, the parallel realities projected on the split screens of cable news were on full display.
Laura Ingraham opened her Fox News show by declaring it “a shameful day for America, a day from which America will never recover,” while on MSNBC, Joy Reid called Trump “a hateful, angry man who hates the very system he wants to lead.”
Tiffany Hsu Contributed report.