Will jury give defendants who stormed capital a break, believing they were brainwashed?

Editor:

As you know President Trump’s attorney Sydney Powell and Tucker Carlson took the same tact in lawsuits and claimed what they say is too outrageous to be believed.

Fox entertainment persuasion is now being used as a  defense by one of the criminals who broke into the capital. Unlike many, his defense is not that he legally obeyed a President’s orders.

This new defendant is claiming Fox brainwashed him into it. He therefore avoids having to show what President Trump’s orders actually were. The defense is called “Foxitis.”

Unlike the failed defense of “affluenza” which claimed people are too spoiled to understand the consequences of their actions, the symptoms of “Foxitis” include delusional thinking leading to the irresistible urge to follow the entertainers’ urgings to storm the Capitol.

It’s ingenious since it’s already known that Fox entertainers contributed to people taking the pandemic less seriously and that resulted in more deaths. Logically this defense could have “legs” with a similarly naive jury.

This is another interesting detour in the Trump, ultra-conservative media, propaganda axis which is using fear, lies, TV and social media to distort information.

Will a jury decide it’s enough to ignore the Rule of Law?

Conrad F. Cropsey

Albion