This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
On Tuesday, Donald Trump became the first former president indicted for a crime. It's an unprecedented event in American history, so coverage of and conversation around the event hasn't had a blueprint to follow.
Jon Hunter is our Dakota Political Junkie. He'll help us navigate the murky waters of comments, official statements and expectations. He discusses the evolution of the political statement and what's already been released from Gov. Kristi Noem and Sen. Mike Rounds.
Plus, the South Dakota political wheel is already beginning to turn again. Our Junkie will explain what a legislative summer study is and what to expect in the coming months.
Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader.
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Lori Walsh:
You are listening to In The Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm your host, Lori Walsh.
Well, when historic political news breaks, what do you expect to hear from your elected officials? We're going to talk about expectations for the official statement here with Jon Hunter on our Dakota Political Junkies conversation. Then we'll talk about what's coming up here at home with summer legislative studies, which is even more interesting, I think, than topic A, but we need to address topic A. Jon is a publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader, a member of the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame, and one of our Dakota political junkies for many years now. Welcome back. Thank you for being here.
Jon Hunter:
Great. Thanks for the invitation, Lori.
Lori Walsh:
So, we live in a new world of Twitter, and Twitter is changing even as we speak. When news happens... Think back to the earliest days of your newspaper career and how statements got issued from senators, from governors, from lawmakers when something enormous happened. What can you pull from your memory banks on that?
Jon Hunter:
Well, the first one where you really got into kind of instant communication was the fax machine. So, where you could send, from Washington DC, a statement on something to all the papers and radio stations and TV stations in South Dakota at once. Before that, it was probably making a phone call, right?
Lori Walsh:
Sure.
Jon Hunter:
And you'd have to make 150 phone calls to get that done. So, to me, that was the very first part of that. And then once you got into email and so forth, electronic communications, it did change and it still continues to change. As you see on official websites, they have Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and whatever the latest one is.
Lori Walsh:
Right.
Jon Hunter:
No more TikToks, I don't think, on those. So there's so many channels now, which one do you really go to? And I think most of the congressional offices would repeat the same thing on multiple channels. So it doesn't matter too much which one you go to.
Lori Walsh:
Whose responsibility is it? Is it the senator's responsibility to issue a statement or is it the journalist's responsibility to call and say, "Do you have any comments on this war, this disaster, this shooting, this political news?"
Jon Hunter:
Well, I think just because of my background, I would think the journalist needs to try to frame the question because we are trying to report to the people of South Dakota or of Madison or wherever, what we think is good. And so, we'd rather control that narrative a little bit and say, "No, we want you to focus on this." Whereas a candidate or an elected official may say, "Well, this fits in my next campaign really well. If you have a school shooting somewhere, I wanted to talk about guns in South Dakota. I'll tie those together." Whereas we want to know what do you think about, whatever the topic of the day is?" But I think both would pursue that. Journalists would ask the questions and the politicians would probably try to express what they wanted to express.
Lori Walsh:
So on a day like yesterday, when a former president goes to an official building and pleads not guilty to 34 charges, an indictment is unsealed, he's arraigned, we want to know what our elected leaders think because we're conditioned to want to know that because we deserve to know that. How would you put that into context as far as what their responsibility is and what we have a right to expect?
Jon Hunter:
Yeah, that's a terrific way of asking that question. What do we expect or what should they do? And I think you're going to get a lot of answers on the political spectrum. So the first thing that the extreme people on each party want is to make conclusions about this. In the Trump indictment kind of thing, you want your ultra-conservative people to say, "Oh, this is terrible because the prosecutor is a Democrat and it's a witch hunt," Or whatever. And contrast, the far left people are going to want to say, "Trump is so bad, we should convict him without even looking at the thing," And go on and on.
Now, you've heard me say on this show before, there's a vast group of people in the middle who, I think, in some cases, they'd like to say, "You know what? Let's look at the evidence. Let's let this process play out a little bit farther. Just because the indictment has been unsealed, I don't think we can either convict or acquit the president. There's a process that this has to go through." Now that makes for boring newspaper or in the moment copy, right? That says, "Well, let's just wait." And I think, generally, the public does want some answers quickly, and there's probably pressure on the members of Congress to make conclusions earlier than they should.
Lori Walsh:
There's an absurdity to it because I was listening to the coverage and they were, you know, "He has left the building. He is headed north on the JFK." If you've ever been on the JFK. "Well now he's stuck in traffic, which wouldn't have happened when he was president, by the way." And with all due respect to the journalists who are doing this difficult work, one has to ask the question... And then somebody else was on and they had just received the unsealed information and were reading through it as fast as they possibly can. And I thought, "What could go wrong if you're asking somebody to comment?" Even if they're a savvy political analyst, you're asking them to comment on something while they're flipping through the pages and saying, "Well, here's what I see, here's what see." It's important to remember that that information is really the beginning of... Not the beginning, but the beginning of this particular chapter-
Jon Hunter:
Right.
Lori Walsh:
... of this story.
Jon Hunter:
More, the public phase of this. It wouldn't surprise me as the founders were drafting the Declaration of Independence, that there were reporters outside that say, "Can you just show me a draft of this thing? Just show me a couple of pages and I want to read it fast and let people know." So I think that's been a long... Remember some of those old movies where you'd see the reporters rushing out?
Lori Walsh:
To the phone booth?
Jon Hunter:
To the phone booth. There's six phone booths and they're all fighting for it. But what might be interesting is, like you say it, is it relevant information that he's on the JFK and that he's stuck in traffic? And I might think that the proliferation of media is maybe adding some stuff that we didn't want to know, or maybe people want to know that, I don't know.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, they were trying to figure out where he was going. Is he going back to Trump Tower? Is he going to the airport?
Jon Hunter:
Oh, okay.
Lori Walsh:
That was the bit. And like I said, I don't know that that was particularly compelling to me. So let's talk a little bit about these statements that have come out. Example A, Kristi Noem, who I have not received an official email from, but she did post on Twitter and she said, "A majority of Americans believe that this prosecution of President Trump is political, so do I. Murderers and other major crimes have skyrocketed in NYC since Alvin Bragg took office. He should focus on his job, keeping people safe. He needs to get his priorities straight."
There's many comments here, most of which I cannot read online. I mean, this is the classic Twitter statement, in which case the governor has to make her case to the American people about what she thinks in a very short, limited amount of text, and she hits her priorities here. Here's what I think. This guy is political. By the way, big cities are infested with crime not like us. She's hitting the political talking points there. What do you think about her statement and what she's trying to get from it?
Jon Hunter:
Well, I think you made the right conclusions there. She's saying two things. One is that it's political. So, which I think is an unfair accusation, because what that says or people hear from that is that the verdict will be unfair. And that's not reasonable to think that if whatever the process is, let's give the process a chance to do that. You don't say in advance it was unfair. But the second part is he should be focusing on his job. And that's a little bit of a puppet show thing where you're holding one hand over here and you say, don't look at this. Look at this over here.
So it wasn't focused on were these 34 charges true or not? It's that the prosecutor, there's a crime in Morningside Park that is not being prosecuted. So it's a little bit of a intentional distraction. So I would however expect most people to make conclusions like this. They will make in advance a party line conclusion, which is, I think it's too bad for the justice system to be politicized like that, to say it's a Republican or Democratic judge or prosecutor or whatever. But I'm sure you'll get that from all the members.
Lori Walsh:
Here is the official statement of US Senator Mike Brown, and he issues the following statement. And this is a little bit longer, but it's worth reading, "Regardless of your political position or perspective, this prosecution should concern everyone. The integrity of our justice system has been called into question because of a politically motivated district attorney who is bringing charges that the Department of Justice declined to prosecute. The indictment includes 34 counts of falsifying business records for allegations of activity that occurred more than six years ago. Despite the fact these charges are normally misdemeanor charges, the district attorney in his indictment is attempting to bootstrap multiple underlying crimes in order to elevate these charges to a felony level. While everyone, including the former president is subject to the laws of this country, no one should be singled out for political purposes. Unfortunately, this soap opera of a prosecution appears to be just that.
That is the official statement from US Senator Mike Rounds before this could be popping up right now for all I know. But before we came in here, there was nothing from Representative Johnson or Senator Thune on their Twitter feeds and nor was there in my inbox from email. So this is what we have in front of us today. Thoughts on Senator Rounds' statement.
Jon Hunter:
Well, he, I think, does make some good points that the justice system has been called into question and that's unfortunate. But if it needs calling into question, we should do that. If it has become politicized, then we should do that. But he again, followed along the party thing that said this soap opera of a prosecution, so he's making a conclusion already that it's going to be an unfair verdict, whatever it is. Although if the president is acquitted on all counts, they say, look, the system worked because our guy didn't...
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, maybe if he had changed the word prosecution. I mean, just what we were talking about, it is a soap opera is a spectacle partially because of what people like us are going to do with it and the media is going to do with it. And then partially because of the protestors out front. And this Donald Trump is not necessarily going to shy away from making this a soap opera if he is consistent with his character in the past. So there's a lot of drama, and I sort of liked it. Mike Rounds said that at the end. This just going to be a lot of-
Jon Hunter:
So here's the question, Lori. If you were a reporter covering that, what would you have as your first day story out of this? They've been unsealed. I suppose you talk about those, but do you talk about some of the comments that others are making?
Lori Walsh:
Well, one of the things I really liked about the coverage of NPR yesterday, even though I wasn't a big fan, and I mean it's really impossible to judge because you're, the microphone's on. You got to keep talking. But one of the things I really liked is they said, "If you're in the press conference, what do you want to know right now?" And some of those questions that reporters were posing were the questions that Mike Rounds was saying, one of my big questions is why now? So I think my first story would be a timeline of, this was six years ago. This is what has unfolded since then. We got here and we're not really sure why, but this is what the prosecutors say. This is what Bragg says is the reason why. So I think that would be one of the first things I would think I would be curious about reporting on is the timing of this. I'm less interested in who shows up to protest and what they say to each other.
Jon Hunter:
No, I agree. I think that the timeline is important and relevant. Also, I think how serious the charges are. Is it a tax thing? If in that case is a New York state tax that he is avoiding because he was falsified a record? Or if it was, I mean, I haven't read the charges, although I skimmed them a little bit, but it's in a form that I can't really understand very well. So I think the timeframe, but also you talked about the protests and there are people outside the courthouse who are on both sides, and they're probably a lot like our congressional delegation where they've made conclusions in advance, it's going to be unfair. Or we should do this.
Lori Walsh:
Lock him up. Yeah, they're holding signs that say lock him up. The moment has finally come if you're on that side of the political spectrum.
Jon Hunter:
But what about all the people who aren't protesting? And that's not a very easy thing to... You can't picture someone in their living room. We said, let's let this thing play out. How do you interview that person? Yeah, but you mentioned the car thing. Do you remember the white Bronco thing? Is that where we are?
Lori Walsh:
It's very white Bronco-esque. Well, I want to make sure that we pivot off of this to get to really the meat of what's happening in South Dakota, which is we have wrapped this legislative session. The impacts of that legislation will start changing the way we live and the way we pay taxes in this state. But there's also what's known as a summer study or summer studies. I always misspeak and say summer session. It's not a summer session.
Jon Hunter:
Okay.
Lori Walsh:
But if I say that preemptively correct me. This is the time when lawmakers really dig deep into complicated issues that we need to learn more about. It's one of my favorite times of the legislative session is the summer studies. What do you see coming ahead?
Jon Hunter:
I agree. And there are a lot of times during the session, if you get an issue that is bubbling up, whether it's through committee or on the floor, is that there'll be a kind of stalemate. People believe strongly both sides. The vote is split ultimately in our system in South Dakota, that often will go to defeat. It requires too many victories to get a law passed. Two committees, two chambers, and the governor, everybody having to agree. So everything that kind of made it part of the way and didn't and is still split, they'll say, let's just do a summer study on that. And that's usually a good way to dismiss it and table it to the 41st day. So then the executive committee of the legislature gets together and said, "Hey, we had all these ideas for summer studies. What's really worth it?" And they select some, and it's extra work for legislators.
But as your point, Lori, was, it's a really good thing because you're out of the spotlight of the session itself. You can maybe go visit the prisons that we're going to talk about or visit the healthcare or the facility in Yankton to talk about social services. So it doesn't have the pressure. It doesn't have the spotlight. It has some more timeframe. And I think we get really good results out of those things. Now the trick is you can't do them all. In this year, I think they were 15 proposed and they're going to do two or something like this.
But I think they'd probably try to choose those two wisely. And also, Lori, there's another point besides summer studies, is there are other relationships outside that realm that work on legislation for next year. It might be an industry group and an agency of the government that say, "Hey, there was some legislation proposed that didn't pass. Let's kind of talk about this." And then whoever introduces it next year might have a better bill that we have already kind of worked out the details. So in addition to summer studies, I think there's some more informal kind of things that also help next year's legislation.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, one of my favorite things about the summer study is the voices of people who come and testify in front of committees. So as committees are formed, and I was particularly tuned into the mental health conversations a few years ago, you got to really hear people come to their lawmakers and say, this is how complicated it is. And they seem to be more relaxed in that context than having to drive to pier, stand up in front of a committee in this room. The votes about that happen.
Jon Hunter:
SDPB is on it.
Lori Walsh:
SDPB is there watching everything you do, and then that. You got to make your case in 30 seconds and you see people really sort of struggling with that. But there was an authenticity to the summer study that I... No, I mean, they're not perfect. I'm not saying that. But I appreciate following the process.
Jon Hunter:
I totally am totally with you because I think it is hard to testify in Pierre and there's even rules about, you need to be a registered lobbyist to testify and so forth. And so the summer studies are just at a better pace. They might have four meetings and they'll do them in four different towns in South Dakota, so that towns that would be affected or that people want to testify. So I think they're healthy.
Lori Walsh:
We got to wrap up. So in our last 30 seconds, what are the topics that we're going to be talking about really all summer long then?
Jon Hunter:
Well, one can this long-term care, and that needs addressing and I'm glad that's one. We've had a number of nursing homes, I think something like 15 nursing homes in South Dakota close. That needs to be addressed and I'm glad they're doing it. And also county funding and mandated services. And that's going to end up, I think, with corrections. And so those are both great topics. I talked about them at the beginning of the session. I'm looking forward to the summer studies.
Lori Walsh:
Jon Hunter, publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader member of the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame, Dakota Political Junkie. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate. See you next time.
Jon Hunter:
Take care.
