Stuck in courtroom, Trump turns his legal trial into his marketing campaign | EUROtoday

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The final place Donald Trump needs to be is seated at a defence desk, muted, in a courtroom in New York City, surrounded by reporters, for six to eight weeks.

A person who’s used to spending his days {golfing}, surrounded by loyalists at his Florida resort, raging at community information, and touring to makeshift arenas for rallies the place his identify is all over the place is as an alternative coming into the second week of witness testimony within the first-ever legal trial of an American president.

But like his civil fraud trial down the road from the downtown Manhattan courthouse the place he’s on trial for allegedly falsifying enterprise data, the previous president is counting on the cameras staged within the adjoining hallway to solid himself as a sufferer of political prosecution, the defining function of his 2024 presidential marketing campaign.

That rhetoric is amplified in his marketing campaign’s messages to supporters in more and more absurd and false characterisations of what’s taking place in courtroom, the place he pits his phrase in opposition to the reporters within the room and the official courtroom transcript.

Moments after Manhattan prosecutors requested a decide to tremendous him a minimum of $10,000 for a sequence of posts allegedly violating the trial’s gag order, his marketing campaign fired out an e-mail titled “I’m being held hostage!”

The day earlier than, the marketing campaign warned that “all hell breaks loose in 24 hours” and that Mr Trump “COULD BE THROWN IN JAIL AT THAT VERY MOMENT!”

Hours later, one other plea: “My farewell message.”

“If things don’t go our way,” it mentioned, “I could be thrown in jail.”

In one other message, clicking “yes” or “no” on “WILL YOU VOTE FOR ME IF THE DEEP STATE THROWS ME IN JAIL?” sends supporters to a donation web page.

While his marketing campaign falsely tells his supporters that he’s being held “hostage” by President Joe Biden, he describes his potential election loss in more and more apocalyptic phrases.

“If we lose this election we’re not going to have a country left,” he advised supporters at Mar-a-Lago on Super Tuesday.

“I think our country is going to cease to exist,” he mentioned in remarks from Michigan earlier this month. “It could be the last election we ever have. I actually mean that. We don’t win, I think this could be the last election we ever have. That’s where our country is going.”

While President Biden’s marketing campaign outspends Mr Trump on the airwaves, the previous president’s political motion committees are spending thousands and thousands of {dollars} on his attorneys and authorized charges, with a trial limiting how a lot time he can spend on the highway in entrance of cheering supporters, or on his golf programs or on his cellphone the place he can escape them.

He will check the boundaries of his marketing campaign schedule by holding two rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin on 1 May earlier than heading again to courtroom to New York for 2 days of testimony.

When he arrives within the courtroom, trudging behind a pair of US Secret Service brokers, he sits alone, briefly, staring on the empty room forward of him. His shoulders tense up, his fingers fold in entrance of him, and he leans in opposition to the desk the place he might be seated for practically eight hours a day, 4 days per week.

Over the course of the day, he sinks in opposition to his chair, closes his eyes, or stares expressionless on the witness in entrance of him. When his attorneys and prosecutors share fun, he’s stone confronted.

And when he leaves, he rises from the desk and slowly walks in direction of the exit, exhausted and obvious on the press round him.

The joint fundraising committee that blasts dozens of messages to supporters every week falsely claimed twice that he “stormed” out of courtroom.

It’s a jarring shift from the televised Trump steps exterior the courtroom doorways, the place he mugs for digital camera crews to assault his rivals and the prosecutors and judges dealing with the circumstances in opposition to him.

“I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday,” he advised reporters on 26 April earlier than coming into the courtroom. “It’d be nice to be with her but I’m at a courthouse for a rigged trial. It’s a rigged trial, it’s terrible. But we’re doing very well in this rigged trial. Everybody knows it.”

But in his New York courtrooms, the previous president has been compelled to take a seat in silence whereas attorneys and witnesses unload proof supporting allegations that he’s propped up by an empire of fraud, and that he coated up a intercourse scandal to efficiently enhance his probabilities of successful the 2016 presidential election.

Across the primary days of his first legal trial, now coming into its second week of testimony, the previous president has sat quietly for hours, usually together with his eyes closed or slumped in a chair, whereas a longtime ally testified a few scheme to suppress damaging and salacious tales throughout his 2016 marketing campaign.

He listened to prosecutors inform jurors that Mr Trump’s marketing campaign went into “damage control mode” after the world heard him brag about sexually assaulting ladies.

His attorneys have additionally tailored Mr Trump’s marketing campaign rhetoric of their defence, increase a defendant who thrives on reward and refuses to confess wrongdoing.

“We will call him President Trump out of respect for the office he held,” his lead lawyer Todd Blanche mentioned in his opening assertion on 22 April. “But he’s not just our former president, he’s not just Donald Trump that you’ve seen on TV or read about or seen photos of. He’s also a man, he’s a husband, he’s a father.”

By the afternoons, between outbursts aimed toward President Biden or college protests or oil costs, his consideration narrows to the indignity and petty annoyances of getting to take a seat in a courtroom as a legal defendant. He complains in regards to the “freezing” temperatures and the way he has to take a seat “as straight as I can all day long.”

“This is eight days that we’ve all been sitting in this courthouse,” he mentioned on 26 April. “Our country is going to hell.”