Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

and a respected character actor as the crusty but benign judge

Adam Kinzinger was the first I heard raise Trump odor awareness.

There's an entertaining Rolling Stone piece up today about how the trial is driving him berserk. He's apparently most pissed at Maggie Haberman (the first person to report on his falling asleep), Jimmy Kimmel, and the courtroom sketch artist.

why it's not like he drew the fart

There's an entertaining Rolling Stone piece up today about how the trial is driving him berserk.

Is he increasingly isolated tho

his fartshake brings all the boys to his yard

courtroom artists seem to struggle with form but at least pongo snodgrass stink lines are piss easy to draw

Make arse gas again

https://hyperallergic-newspack.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2023/04/20230404_161615_resized_2-scaled.jpg

she draws them as a lilac miasma

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRalpP-mjs

Triumph: like Trump, a relic of the past century that we really should have been done with long ago.

one of the talking heads just now on ABC This Week their Sunday news show was Reince fucking Priebus! like he was just a normal person duking it out with Donna Brazile. shouldn't he be in prison or something?

Here’s a great NPR piece on Alvin Bragg:

https://www.npr.org/2024/04/19/1244729959/alvin-bragg-manhattans-district-attorney-draws-friends-close-and-critics-closer

I see Maggie The Habes is essaying non-fiction narrative writing:

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

And:

It is hard to recall any other time when Mr. Trump has had to sit and listen to insults without turning to social media or a news conference to punch back. And it is just as hard to recall any other time he has been forced to be bored for so long.

This would make for an amusing novella length book, which ends with him looking at her at the end of the story and having no idea who she is

Inject this in my veins please

(I know he knows who she is)

I honestly found this Politico piece on the nature of what's public in this trial in terms of motions/documentation very much of interest. It's worth a read!

Heavens! Who could have predicted this?!

After Blanche’s complaints, (Judge) Merchan countered with a swipe at Trump’s legal strategy, noting that his decision to implement the “pre-motion” process was because “we were being absolutely inundated with motions, most of which, frankly, were close to frivolous, if not frivolous.”

I asked Mitchell Epner on Bluesky more re how these filings work in a NY context -- very interesting answer:

This is par for the course in New York state court criminal practice. Justice Merchan isn’t doing anything in particular to shield documents from the public. No NY criminal dockets are online.

Oddly, NY civil dockets are both online & free. Much better than federal courts’ PACER system (pricey). NY civil practitioners have worked hard to make documents easily available. Nobody in the criminal system has an incentive to demand criminal dockets be moved online. Everyone benefits from those records being difficult to obtain, except the public.

I'd agree that it's good that court proceedings are largely public, but nearly immediate public feedback is generally not often gonna be helpful because the public is saturated with prejudices that the court system tries to tamp down through its elaborate processes.

Well, feedback is one thing but having the information out there is still good. Epner's answer also explained why it is we all had the information in the Engoron civil case to immediate hand -- because it was a civil case! (And why we're still getting it, thus James's motion a couple of days back that unperson noted.)

Full speed ahead with the hush money trial, opening arguments are happening now

And earlier Merchan ruled that the prosecutors can ask him about all kinds of cases he's already been found guilty/liable in if he wants to testify so I'm guessing that will keep him from doing just that.

Is the defense going to present an actual case to the jury or just whine about how unfair stuff is?

Per NYT:

Blanche seeks to have the jurors relate to his client, as he says Trump is doing “what any of us would do.”

I...think you might want to rethink that approach.

You can't judge a man until you've walked a mile in his ooze

Separately, that civil case hearing about the bond has wrapped up quickly enough:

AGREEMENT REACHED: Kise says they'll agree to maintain the Schwab account in cash and give Knight exclusive control of the account. Under a previous agreement, a Trump trust shared control. Seems like this will moot the AG's challenge to the bond.

— Rachel Scharf (@rscharf_) April 22, 2024

"I have a spoiler alert: There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election," Blanche says. "It’s called democracy."

this guy is fun:

"It seems as if Blanche will seek to convince the jury that everything that happened was appropriate and done by the book, not even worthy of notice. That Cohen was Trump’s lawyer, and he was paid for legal services. But he’ll also seek to distance his client from the matter: “President Trump had nothing to do with the invoice,” he says."

xpost Big 'how do you do fellow kids' energy there.

i will prove that he WAS my client's lawyer but that there is no such thing as a lawyer!

The thing to remember -- I've said it before -- is the thing Trump hates most in the world is losing, and if he feels he's losing he'll do anything to distract from it. You see it happening. You see him fiddling with his chips before he flips the table.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) April 22, 2024

soooo, if their defense is just: this wasn't a hush money payment and michael cohen is a liar then..they are cooked, right? they aren't even going to bother defending the election stuff. because they can't. their only shot is for the jury to...be really really dumb.

Burden of proof is always the prosecutor's to make but it does seem like they have most of the cards.

PECKER TO THE STAND.

Hahaha

they are not dumb:

"Merchan stops testimony, says he realizes jurors weren’t given writing materials to take notes. At least 10 raise their hands when asked if they’d like some."

this is going to be a pretty crazy trial.

great characters. The Fixer. The Rag King. The Porn Star. The Orange Boss.

Tom Wolfe is very upset that he's dead right now.

ICYMI pic.twitter.com/YnXm2V5Nj0

— a horse child is born (taken out for gallops) 🫏🐀 (@BinAnimals) April 22, 2024

He’s not the only one tbrr

xpost LOL

so badly faked it loses half a letter grade but still funny

i wonder if news networks gave guidelines for how to report on pecker

so the defense's argument is essentially "this should not be a crime"??

yes

i wonder if news networks gave guidelines for how to report on pecker

Just heard a woman reporter on Sky News say, "Pecker is going to be huge".

it's the 'catch and kill' part that isn't a crime; it's the down-ballot ramifications wrt the election and that doing c&k was in service of interfering w the election

Epner with a solid point earlier:

I'm reading the live blogging of Todd Blanche's opening statement and looking for one thing: Does Todd Blanche saying something along the lines of "You don't have to like Donald Trump to reject the charges in this case."

I have not seen Blanche say anything like that yet.

FPOTUS may have barred Blanche from saying it. Without having been privy to their strategic discussions, I'm virtually certain that Blanche & Necheles want that to be said during the opening. It is what every defense counsel says in a case where the defendant has some fleas on him.

The prosecution has objected to three separate portions of Blanche's opening (which is rare). Each of those objections has been SUSTAINED (meaning the judge ruled for the prosecution and against Trump).

This is horrible for Blanche's credibility with the jury, in my training & experience.

He implicitly notes that this is in contrast to the prosecutors being upfront about Cohen's own flaws, and hazarded a guess as to how their closing argument could go. But yeah, Trump BEING Trump, having to at any point admit a flaw seems like a no-go so he wouldn't let his lawyers do that either, and FWIW, this suddenly becomes a clear running line across ALL his legal cases, essentially hiding in plain sight. He never fails, is only failed, etc.