Trump fans love when the big guy gets mad. They love when he hurls insults, when he attacks journalists (or inspires others to do so), when he vows revenge on his endless list of enemies. (Do these same people like when he doesn’t understand how magnets work, forgets about World War II, and can’t get the sitting president right? Oh, probably.) This week the former president is back in court, despite not having to be there. And of course he’s acting like a petulant child again, even if only jurists and journalists are there to see it.
Trump was back in the hometown that hates him Wednesday for the second defamation lawsuit brought on him by E. Jean Carroll. He’s already a predictably unruly presence in a courtroom, but this may have been him at his worst. During the trial’s second day, which found Carroll taking the witness stand, Trump, per Politico’s Erica Orden, was muttering so loud that the jury could hear it.
Among his remarks was that Carroll, who’s long accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in the ‘90s, “suddenly gotten her memory back.”
With the jury out of the room, Carroll’s lawyer Shawn Crowley is complaining that Trump is muttering loud enough that the plaintiff’s table can hear him. Crowley says Trump is saying Carroll’s testimony is false and suggesting she has “suddenly gotten her memory back.”
— erica orden (@eorden) January 17, 2024
According to NBC News, Trump could also be heard telling his lawyers the trial was a “witch hunt” and a “con job.”
After Judge Lewis Kaplan denied one of his attorney’s objections, Trump also reportedly slammed the table and appeared to call Kaplan a “nasty guy.”
Even before Lunch Kaplan was forced to reprimand that frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presodential ticket:
“Mr. Trump has the right to be present here. That right can be forfeited, and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive” and “if he disregards court orders,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan told Trump and his attorney after the jury had left the courtroom. “Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial. I understand you are very eager for me to do that,” the judge said.
“I would love it. I would love it,” Trump responded.
“I know you would because you just can’t control yourself in this circumstances, apparently. You just can’t,” the judge shot back before an exasperated Trump threw his hands in the air. “Neither can you,” Trump said.
When Trump returned to the courtroom after break, posts from him again emerged on his rinky-dink Twitter clone, torching Kaplan as “abusive, rude, and obviously not partial,” as well as a “seething and hostile Clinton-appointed Judge.”
Trump’s antics may wind up getting him barred from the courtroom, but surely this is what his die-hards want him to do. Perhaps more sensible Republican voters may eventually think otherwise, though if they haven’t, in the year of our Lord 2024, seen through the dictator guy yet, they probably won’t now.
(Via NBC News)