Mika Brzezinski Calls out Fox News for Reporting About Fani Willis’ Demeanor, Behavior, Looks

BRZEZINSKI: “It’s so interesting because you could definitely get from her testimony, Lisa, that she was angry for a number of reasons, and many of them she didn’t bring up. She obviously doesn’t like being lied about. She obviously doesn’t like having her personal life dragged out into the open, and also lied about. She mentioned several times in her testimony that she’s had to move a lot because of death threats even before the election trial began, because of other trials she’s presided over. I mean, this has been a tough job for her. And then to hear, you know, this sideshow happen, to try and delay the election interference case — this is her point of view — she was just, you know what, absolutely P.O.’d and got up on the stand because she was like, ‘Damn it, I’m just gonna have to tell my own story to these people.’ Let’s talk about these people. The Trump attorneys seemed bumbling, they seemed unprepared, they seemed completely surprised that she took the stand and had absolutely nothing prepared for her. They kept asking her the same questions over and over again, and they would talk about her cash, the cash that she kept in her home through the course of her life, she said she had anywhere $500 cash during hard times, up to $15,000, maybe, in her apartment during really good times, maybe on average $6,000 to $9,000, but she never walked around with it except on vacation. At the most, she spent $2,500 cash when they went on a trip, that was to pay him back for it. But most of the time, she didn’t carry around this cash, but she kept it where she lived. And let’s talk about where she lived. She couldn’t live in her home. She couldn’t live in her home because this election interference trial has caused a danger to her life. So if you’re wondering why she’s angry is that this has led to such an upheaval in her life, in so many different ways, to serve and to try to take this case to fruition, and then to have this happen. That would cause someone to be very, very angry. I know I’ll get to a question, but I just want to point out, you know it’s bad when you turn on Fox News and they start talking about her demeanor, her behavior, her looks. I mean, it shows that there’s probably a problem with the case that they think they have against her. I thought she was fiery. I thought she said important things. I think that she set herself up for a lot of criticism, but I think this is a woman who doesn’t give a damn about that. How do you think she did, Lisa, in the face of everything that came at her yesterday? Would you have adjusted anything?”
RUBIN: “You know, it’s really hard to say, Mika. It is really hard to criticize somebody’s performance given the accusations that have been thrown at her and Nathan Wade. If Fani Willis were my client, I probably would have advised against two things. I would have advised against some of the shows of anger, and I would have advised her against some of the detail that she provided. There were times in which that detail was helpful and humanizing to her, and there were other times where it was just unnecessary explanation. It almost gave the other attorneys more license to probe into her personal life. But I’m glad that you put the focus on her safety and what she was going through at the time. And let me add an additional lens of Covid, because at the time that she moved into the safe house that became the subject of questions yesterday, she reminded everybody who was watching, that was peak Covid, that was a period of time where she was, as she put it, really lonely because she was living alone in the safehouse, her father continued to live in her primary residence, and she just seemed, in that moment, very human. But it’s easy for me, as a lawyer and litigator who watched this, to criticize in retrospect. It is another thing to have lived this. And I think to bring a different lens to it, one of the reasons that the attorneys on the Trump side seemed so flummoxed by her is that they lack a certain cultural competency. Depending on how you grew up, where you grew up, and even things like who your community was, the practices that Fani Willis was talking about in terms of keeping cash in your home, those might resonate differently with you depending on your upbringing. So, a number of attorneys in that courtroom were completely stymied by it, that didn’t make sense to her. But when she explained how she was raised by her father, and how important it was for him to see her grow up, a) independent, and financially independent as a black woman, that made the difference for me and I think for others watching as well.”