I don’t know if this will mean that we have stepped back from the abyss, but it’s at least a tiny positive sign:
For the better part of a decade, Donald J. Trump and his allies at Fox News have beguiled some Americans and enraged others as they spun up an alternative world where elections turned on fraud, one political party oppressed another, and one man stood against his detractors to carry his version of truth to an adoring electorate.
Then this week, on two consecutive days, the former president and the highest-rated cable news channel were delivered a dose of reality by the American legal system.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump became the first former president in history to be indicted on criminal charges, after a Manhattan grand jury’s examination of hush money paid to a pornographic film actress in the final days of the 2016 election.
The next day, a judge in Delaware Superior Court concluded that Fox hosts and guests had repeatedly made false claims about voting machines and their supposed role in a fictitious plot to steal the 2020 election, and that Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network should go to trial.
Both defendants dispute the claims. Still, the back-to-back blows against twin titans of American politics landed as a reminder of the still-unfolding reckoning with the tumult of the Trump presidency.
For the left, the seismic week delivered an “I told you so” years in the making. Democrats who have long wanted Mr. Trump criminally charged got the satisfaction of watching a prosecutor and a grand jury agree.
A day later, after years of arguing that Fox News was hardly fair and balanced, they could read a judge’s finding that Fox had not conducted “good-faith, disinterested reporting” on Dominion. Fox argues that statements made on air alleging election fraud are protected by the First Amendment.
While the two cases have nothing in common in substance, they share a rare and powerful potential. In both, any final judgments will be rendered in a courtroom and not by bickering pundits on cable news and editorial pages.
“There will always be a remnant, no matter how the matter is resolved in court, who will refuse to accept the judgment,” said Norman Eisen, a government ethics lawyer who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “But when you look at other post-upheaval societies, judicial processes reduce factions down to a few hard-core believers.”
He added, “A series of court cases and judgments can break the fever.”
I’ll believe it when I see it. But you’ve gotta keep hope alive…