No TV cameras are allowed in Judge Juan Merchans courtroom at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, and so the dispatches from Donald Trumps hush-money trial have arrived mostly via text. The human arrangement on display, in which a man in his late seventies is forced to reckon not with his alleged major political crimes (those cases will be brought at later dates, in other jurisdictions) but with more tawdry matters, has proved delicious for the journalists in the room. Some have taken a vintage reporters hyper-observational approach: Jonathan Alter noted in the Times that although Trump normally wears a red tie, for the last four days in court hes gone with a blue one. Others waxed more poetic: Olivia Nuzzi, of New York, wrote, Trump is tilting his head dramatically and making trout-like movements with his mouth.
All eyes, as usual, were on the defendant. Would Trump make a scene, would he go through with his pledge to testify, would he say something truly wild? Not yet. (Granted, theres another four weeks to go.) In the corridors, he complained to reporters about the chilly courthouse; listening to testimony, he glazed over. Trump appeared to nod off a few times, Maggie Haberman, of the Times, reported, with his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest. The minor drama of the pretrial motions orbited around whether the ex-President, under threat of being held in contempt, would stop saying nasty things on social media about the jurors, the witnesses, and family members of the judge and the prosecutors. Perhaps in anticipation that he wont, the Secret Service is reportedly making contingency plans: according to protocol, if Trump has to spend a few nights in jail, at least one protective escort will join him.
That Joe Biden appears older and somewhat diminished has been a wellspring of liberal panic. But Trump is diminishing, too, right in front of us. Strapped for cash, and facing an estimated seventy-six million dollars in legal fees, he spent much of the winter courting billionaires at Mar-a-Lago. Having inveighed against White House plans to aid the Ukrainian war effort and to either force a sale of TikTok or ban it, Trump watched as Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House, helped propel both proposals into law. (GOP lawmakers take Trumps policy orders with a grain of salt, a headline in The Hill read.) And though Trump had warned for months that any attempt to try him criminally would induce the wrath of his supporters, by last week, according to the Times, the number of Trump fans outside the courthouse had sunk to the mid-single digits.
For those who are paying attention, this trial is shaping up to be an interestingly sleazy spectacle. The case hinges on whether Trump illegally interfered with the 2016 Presidential election by paying the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels not to reveal publicly that she and Trump had had sex, and by conspiring to have the National Enquirer family of tabloids buy off potentially damaging accusers before their stories were publicized. Michael Cohen, Trumps former lawyer and current antagonist, and an emotionally operatic presence, will testify; so will Daniels, a cooler customer. The first witness was David Pecker, the former C.E.O. of National Enquirers parent company, who described a meeting in August, 2015, at which he, Trump, and Cohen had discussed how he might help Trumps campaign. Pecker said that he had promised to publish positive stories about the billionaire and negative ones about his opponents, and to be your eyes and ears.
By Peckers account, his magazines paid thirty thousand dollars to a former doorman at Trump Tower, to keep quiet about a hard-to-credit story that the Presidential candidate had fathered a secret child with a maid, and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to a Playboy model named Karen McDougal, to not go public with her more convincing account of a nine-month affair with Trump. (Trump denies all the affairs and any wrongdoing.) The boss will take care of it, Pecker said Cohen told him, but, when Trump was slow to reimburse him, the tabloid king refused to act as an intermediary in the effort to buy off Stormy Daniels, leading Cohen to approach her directly. Shortly before the Inauguration, Pecker said, the President-elect invited him to a meeting at Trump Towerwith the soon to be Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chair; and James Comey, the F.B.I. directorwhere Trump thanked Pecker for all hed done. The two worlds that Trump has defined, of tabloid manipulation and of Republican politics, were thus fully intertwined.
These elementsadulterous sex, secret payoffs, a Presidential candidate facing thirty-four felony countscould make for a trial of the century, but, because much of this story has already appeared in investigative reports, including by The New Yorkers Ronan Farrow, and in congressional testimony, it is missing a crucial ingredient: surprise. Some liberal pundits have wondered whether bringing the case was worthwhile. I have a hard time mustering even a meh, the election-law scholar Rick Hasen wrote in the Los Angeles Times, noting the potential for political backlash and the higher-stakes cases to come. (Those cases may become slightly narrowerlast week, the Supreme Court seemed receptive to Trumps arguments that some of the actions for which he has been charged are protected by Presidential immunity.) But the hush-money case is one in which a Presidential candidate is accused of using his wealth to make his election likelier, and whether he committed crimes is a question worth pursuing, especially in the minds of voters who say they wouldnt vote for a felon. (Thats sixty per cent of independents and a quarter of Republicans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.) The sleepy scene at the courthouse doesnt suggest a pro-Trump mob so much as a dawning truth: that, for the first time in a decade, Trump is struggling to command attention.
Even in Manhattan, the action is elsewhere. A few miles uptown, at Columbia University, the student protests over Israels war in Gaza have drawn international attention, and provoked a media frenzy that has overshadowed Trumps trial. (The coverage of the protests, a little bizarrely, has also crowded out news from the actual war.) With polls showing the Presidential race essentially tied, Biden might prefer to run against the omnipresent Trump of the 2020 election cycle, whose lies and threats were easier to get people to notice. The dynamic of the trial could carry over to the election: Trump is diminishing, but the public is tuned out, because everyone already knows exactly who he is.
Read more:
Donald Trump's Sleepy, Sleazy Criminal Trial - The New Yorker
- 'Donald Trump Did This': How to Beat MAGA on Border Security - The Bulwark - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Potential Trump running mate JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr. have become so close that they text or talk on a 'nearly ... - Business Insider - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Trump Second Term: How the World and U.S. Allies Can Prepare for the Election - Foreign Policy - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Poll: Biden and Trump supporters sharply divided by the media they consume - NBC News - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Master Calendar of Trump Court Dates: Criminal and Civil Cases - Just Security - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Trump, GOP seize on campus protests to depict chaos under Biden - The Washington Post - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- UK briefing: How Donald Trump plans to survive hush money trial with his campaign intact newsletter - The Guardian - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Opinion | We Are Talking About the Manhattan Case Against Trump All Wrong - The New York Times - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Election 2024: Biden jokes, Trump still leads and updates from the Sunday shows. - The New York Times - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Pans White House Correspondents' Dinner: 'Colin Jost BOMBED' - The Daily Beast - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Trump's Trial Could Bring a Rarity: Consequences for His Words - The New York Times - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Bemoans Really Bad WHCD, Biden & Colin Jost After All Mock Much Indicted Ex-POTUS - Deadline - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- The Supreme Court's epic failure in dealing with Trump's cases - The Hill - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Donald Trump: In America's most important swing state, a key Biden group wants to hand the presidency to Trump. - Slate - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Is Being Ritually Humiliated in Court - The New Yorker - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Joe Biden trails Donald Trump in new national poll on 2024 election - USA TODAY - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Amid Cases on Abortion and Trump, Roberts Reflects on Supreme Court's Work - The New York Times - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Is Used to the Finer Things in Life. At the Courthouse, 'He's Miserable.' - The Wall Street Journal - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- How Trumps Rhetoric at Rallies Has Escalated - The New York Times - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- The Supreme Court Appears Poised to Protect the Presidencyand Donald Trump - The New Yorker - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- The Supreme Court seems divided over Donald Trump's immunity - The Economist - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- John Dean Says 1 Thing 'Keeping Me On The Edge Of My Seat' In Trump Trial - Yahoo! Voices - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Five Moments That Have Defined Donald Trump's Trial So Far - The New York Times - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- How Trumps trial is playing, politically - The Washington Post - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Opinion | The Ukraine aid vote helps, but U.S. allies complacency would be unwise - The Washington Post - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Hey, SCOTUS your hypocrisy is showing - The Hill - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Bill Barr Is Happy to Debase Himself for Donald Trump Again Mother Jones - Mother Jones - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- The Supreme Court is likely to place Donald Trump above the law in its immunity case - Vox.com - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- RFK is openly gunning for Trump voters now and Republicans are starting to worry - Salon - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Trump Pushes Immigration Conspiracy Theories and Mass Deportations - The New York Times - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Nikki Haley makes surprise appearance on SNL, mocking Donald Trump and Joe Biden - NPR - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Trump feud with UAW reaches fever pitch - The Hill - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump tightens his grip on GOP, bolsters ties with Mike Johnson - USA TODAY - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- 1/31/24 - 2024 Matchups: Biden Opens Up Lead Over Trump In Head-To-Head, Quinnipiac University National Poll ... - Quinnipiac University Poll - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Here's how 2 sentences in the Constitution rose from obscurity to ensnare Donald Trump - Yahoo News - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump floats tariff of more than 60% on imports from China and denies it would start a trade war - Fortune - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Jeffries on House Republicans: Wholly owned subsidiaries of Donald Trump - The Hill - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Ex-DOJ Official Says He's 'Now At The Freakout Stage' Over 1 Donald Trump Case - Yahoo News - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Nikki Haley to GOP: Let's wait to see if Donald Trump is convicted - USA TODAY - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Why Supreme Court appeal will be no 'open mic night' for Donald Trump - USA TODAY - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Nikki Haley hits Donald Trump during 'SNL' sketch ahead of SC primary - USA TODAY - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump's legal fees are draining his campaign funds - The Economist - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Mentions These Names When Asked About Vice Presidential Picks - NDTV - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Trump's lead over Biden may be smaller than it looks - The Economist - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Tory rising star described Donald Trump as 'refreshing' - The Independent - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Joe Biden v Donald Trump - where contest will be won and lost - BBC.com - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump's fed trial on election interference postponed from March - USA TODAY - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Inside Trump's growing influence over congressional Republicans - POLITICO - POLITICO - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Federal judge postpones Trump's March 4 election interference trial - NPR - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Trump Says He Would Not Reappoint Powell as Fed Chair if Elected - Bloomberg - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- I Prosecuted Donald Trump and Won. Here's How It's Done. - The Daily Beast - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Loses London Case Against Ex-MI6 Spy Over Kremlin Dossier - Bloomberg - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- After Speedy Start, Appeals Court Slows Down on Trump Immunity Decision - The New York Times - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump and UAW President Shawn Fain exchange barbs: 'Get rid of this dope' - USA TODAY - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Donald Trump dispels rumors that he reached out to RFK Jr for VP: Never happened - Fox News - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- How Donald Trump Got Disqualified From The Ballot And His Entire Candidacy Wound Up Before The Supreme Court - HuffPost - February 5th, 2024 [February 5th, 2024]
- Trump Says Nikki Haley Is Unlikely to Be His Running Mate - The New York Times - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Goes From Calm To Indignant In Newly Released Deposition Video Of Civil Fraud Lawsuit - HuffPost - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Trump: Haley 'probably ... is not going to be chosen as the vice president' - POLITICO - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Trump returns to New Hampshire as primary nears - The Washington Post - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Boris Johnson: Trump's return could be 'big win for the world' - POLITICO Europe - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Zelenskyy invites Trump to Kyiv POLITICO - POLITICO Europe - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- 'New Hampshire Is Close to a Make-or-Break for Keeping the Nomination Out of Donald Trump's Hands.' - POLITICO - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Trump's pitch in New Hampshire is more about Nikki Haley as he hopes for big win - NPR - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Donald Trump's tax cuts would add to American growthand debt - The Economist - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Donald Trump's populism is turning off corporate donors - The Economist - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Why DeSantis Says Trump's Romp in Iowa Is Actually a Sign of His Weakness - The New York Times - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- The GOP Is Already Clashing Over Trump's VP Pick - POLITICO - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- There is still a way to stop Donald Trump but time is running out - The Guardian - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- The Davos Consensus: Donald Trump Will Win Re-Election - The New York Times - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Maine Secretary of State to Appeal Ruling on Her Decision to Exclude Trump From Ballot - The New York Times - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Vice President Harris says she's 'scared as heck' that Donald Trump could win - The Associated Press - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- What is the point of coming second to Donald Trump? - The Economist - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Thousands Sign Christian Petition Urging Bishops Not to Back Donald Trump - Newsweek - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Why Donald Trump Is Facing E. Jean Carroll in Court a Second Time - The New York Times - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Claims He Will Never Allow Creation of CBDC in the US if Reelected - Yahoo Finance - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Keller @ Large: What Donald Trump's win in Iowa means for the presidential race - CBS Boston - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Donald Trump tries to twist felony charges, lawsuits after Iowa win - USA TODAY - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Donald Trump Just Incriminated Himself on Truth Social: Legal Analyst - Newsweek - January 20th, 2024 [January 20th, 2024]
- Putin 'Actively Hoping' to Get Donald Trump Back as President: Ret. General - Newsweek - December 31st, 2023 [December 31st, 2023]