The criminal trial “reality show” unfolding in the New York state criminal courthouse in Manhattan over the weeks is becoming an overdue introduction for an malignant, obnoxious defendant Donald John Trump to learn that rules have consequences and failure to follow those rules pose a threat to his freedom.
Trump does not believe rules and laws apply to him and, for the most part of hi sordid life, has gotten away with doing whatever he wants.
But learning to sit down and shut up by a judge keeps Trump on edge and becomes dependent on those who impose those rules with a stern look and the face of disdain. That lesson in civility and law provides a show of its own for the jury that must decide his guilt or innocence.
Writes Maggie Haberman of The New York Times
“Sir, can you please have a seat.”
Donald J. Trump had stood up to leave the Manhattan criminal courtroom as Justice Juan M. Merchan was wrapping up a scheduling discussion on Tuesday.
But the judge had not yet adjourned the court or left the bench. Mr. Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the owner of his own company, is used to setting his own pace. Still, when Justice Merchan admonished him to sit back down, the former president did so without saying a word.
The moment underscored a central reality for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. For the next six weeks, a man who values control and tries to shape environments and outcomes to his will is in control of very little.
Everything about the circumstances in which the former president comes to court every day to sit as the defendant in the People v. Donald J. Trump at 100 Centre Street is repellent to him. The trapped-in-amber surroundings that evoke New York City’s more crime-ridden past. The lack of control. The details of a case in which he is accused of falsifying business records to conceal a payoff to a porn star to keep her claims of an affair with him from emerging in the 2016 election.
Of the four criminal cases Mr. Trump is facing, this is the one that is the most acutely personal. And people close to him are blunt when privately discussing his reaction: He looks around each day and cannot believe he has to be there.
Asked about the former president’s aversion to the case, a campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said that Mr. Trump “proved he will remain defiant” and called the case “political lawfare.”
He is sitting in a decrepit courtroom that, for the second half of last week, was so cold his lead lawyer complained respectfully to the judge about it. Mr. Trump hugged his arms to his chest and told an aide, “It’s freezing.”
For the first few minutes of each day during jury selection, a small pool of still photographers was ushered into Part 59 on the 15th floor of the courthouse. Mr. Trump, obsessed with being seen as strong and being seen generally, prepared for them to rush in front of him by adjusting his suit jacket and contorting his face into a jut-jawed scowl. But, by day’s end on Friday, Mr. Trump appeared haggard and rumpled, his gait off-center, his eyes blank.
Trump normally has his own way of doing things and gets away with it,, most of the time, but these are different times and he faces serious and, many believe, long past due punishment for his crimes and behavior.
Adds Haberman:
Many in Mr. Trump’s broader orbit are pessimistic about the case ending in a hung jury or a mistrial, and they see an outright acquittal as virtually impossible. They are bracing for him to be convicted, not because they cede the legal grounds, but because they think jurors in overwhelmingly Democratic Manhattan will be against the polarizing former president.
But the shared sense among many of his advisers is that the process may damage him as much as a guilty verdict. The process, they believe, is its own punishment.
Yes, punishment is long overdue for Donald †rump. He is a serious threat to America, it democracy and our way of life. May he, and those who enable and support him, also be punished and rot in hell with him.
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