The press's Avenatti humiliation

Enduring humiliation.

Morning, all. We take another break from our regularly scheduled “Week in Review” to take a closer look at a particularly embarrassing moment this week in media malfeasance.

Enjoy:

Nobody knows how to humiliate the press quite like the press.

Not even former President Donald Trump.

Former media darling and convicted felon Michael Avenatti has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for attempting to extort Nike.

“Mr. Avenatti’s conduct was outrageous,” the presiding judge, Paul Gardephe of the Southern District of New York, said Thursday. “He hijacked his client’s claims, and he used those claims to further his own agenda — which was to extort millions of dollars from Nike to enrich himself.”

The judge added, “Mr. Avenatti had become drunk on the power of his platform, or what he perceived the power of his platform to be. He had become someone who operated as if the laws and rules that apply to everyone else didn’t apply to him.”

And with that, one of the more humiliating chapters in media malfeasance inches closer to an end. (It’s not over yet. Remember, the disgraced lawyer faces additional charges of tax, wire, and bank fraud in California.) Indeed, no one is worse off for the Avenatti implosion than the press, which is entirely responsible for making him into the fly-by-night “hero” that he was.

Avenatti was 100% a creation of a media starved for something — anything! — that could be used to attack Trump. With his then-client, adult film actress Stormy Daniels, Avenatti didn’t have to try hard to become a beloved and much-sought-after figure in the largest and most powerful newsrooms in the United States. He attacked the “correct” targets, he talked a big game, he peddled lurid details about Trump’s extramarital affair with a porn star, and he claimed criminal misconduct by the president. Our supposedly responsible and prudent press was more than happy to turn Avenatti into a star practically overnight.

With his anti-Trump “resistance” shtick, Avenatti became a semi-permanent fixture in American media. Between March 7 and May 15, 2018, alone, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC hosted the disgraced attorney for a combined 147 television interviews. That is an average of two interviews per day. 

“Trump meets his match: Stormy Daniels’ combative lawyer Michael Avenatti,” an overeager Los Angeles Times reported.

NBC News reported, “Stormy Daniels’s lawyer Michael Avenatti is ready for his star turn.”

“The brilliant egomaniac who could bring down Donald Trump,” said Slate.

Avenatti was invited to the 2018 White House Correspondents' Association dinner. He appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards that same year. He was feted, celebrated, and invited to private parties hosted by media and political elites. Vanity Fair even published an entire article on Avenatti’s “style and skincare.”

The press even entertained the notion that Avenatti would make for a serious contender in the 2020 Democratic primary.

The disgraced lawyer "hit a lot of the right notes" during his visit to Iowa in 2018, said MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace, adding Democrats "would be foolish to underestimate” him.

CNN’s Brian Stelter said elsewhere in an interview with Avenatti, "[L]ooking ahead to 2020, one reason I’m taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news."

“Michael Avenatti is winning the 2020 Democratic primary” Politico reported, ignoring the rather inconvenient fact that the crooked attorney polled at roughly 1% at the time with likely Democratic voters.

New York magazine likewise embraced the “Avenatti for president” lunacy with an article titled, “The Case for Michael Avenatti 2020.”

All this adoration, all the legitimizing of the Avenatti brand, because he represented a porn star who claims she was paid hush money by the president’s capos to keep their affair a secret. It was the ultimate anti-Trump sleaze, and the press couldn’t get enough of it.

By the way, after all the hype, the interviews, the late-night appearances, the presidential-run chatter, and the invites to high-profile galas and parties, both of Daniels’s lawsuits were dismissed in federal court in 2019. Daniels, who alleges Avenatti stole nearly $300,000 from her, was ordered by a judge to pay $300,000 in Trump's legal fees. On top of being a fraud and a crook, Avenatti wasn't even a good lawyer.

Avenatti’s rise and fall is yet another mark against a media that are already struggling to be taken seriously by a distrusting public. Newsrooms willingly latched on to the attorney because they latched on to anything in the Trump era that stood upright and said, “The president is bad.” The press joyfully and enthusiastically elevated Avenatti from obscurity because he had the “right” politics, ignoring all the while the obvious red flags. All that remains now is shame and further proof of the legacy media’s terrible judgement.

The press’s hero-worship of Avenatti isn’t just humiliating in retrospect. It was humiliating at the time. Avenatti was an obviously untrustworthy character, his temperament and personal and professional record the stuff of nightmares. He was clearly a hothead, a megalomaniac dogged by multiple lawsuits and bankruptcy filings. From day one, it was clear Avenatti was a bomb waiting to explode. Anyone with half a brain could see the fuse was lit.

That our press couldn’t see it, or chose not to see it, is a stain that no amount of hand-waving or personal denial can erase.