Trump fooled by a 'Morning Joe' segment into prematurely panicking over indictment: report

This past March, former President Donald Trump sent out a panicky Truth Social post predicting his imminent arrest and calling for his supporters to protest in the streets.

While Trump eventually would be arrested and charged for crimes related to his hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had given him no indication an indictment was near — and Trump would not actually be formally indicted until the next month.

All of this led many observers to question why Trump inaccurately believed he would be indicted weeks before it actually occurred.

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Writing in The Atlantic, reporter Jon Karl claims to have solved the mystery: Trump panicked after watching a segment on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

"A source close to Trump told me that the former president had learned of his pending indictment from an MSNBC show called Morning Joe: Weekend," Karl writes.

"Not that many people are tuning in to a cable-news program that starts at six on Saturday mornings, but Trump was, and he took particular interest in a segment — a rerun from two days earlier — featuring the legal analyst Andrew Weissmann on the Manhattan D.A.’s investigation. Discussing Bragg’s recent interactions with Trump’s legal team and the grand jury, Weissmann said he couldn’t see the D.A. not indicting the former president, telling the show’s co-host Joe Scarborough that he believed such a move was imminent."

It was after watching this segment that Trump apparently picked up his phone and launched a frantic all-caps post urging his followers to "PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!"