Commentary on Trump’s juvenile performance at the E. Jean Carroll trial yesterday has mostly focused on how much it’s going to cost him in damanges. But as Emptywheel points out, this performance was planned. He wasn’t behaving like a spoiled brat because he lacks self-control. It was part of a pre-arranged strategy. One suspects it is a colossaly stupid strategy, but it’s a strategy nonetheless.
Clue: On Monday Trump’s fast-talking lawyer Joe Tacopina abruptly withdrew from this case and from the the criminal “hush money” trial. Tacopina has not said why he did this. I suspected that Trump was demanding he do something in court that would shred the rest of his legal career. That appears to be the case.
Clue: Emptywheel noticed that “Truth Social” posts in Trump’s name were being posted while he was sitting in the courtroom. Without his phone. These were either pre-written and scheduled to post during the trial, or someone on his staff was authorized to write and post them. The “truths” all defamed Carroll some more and griped about Judge Kaplan.
One assumes that Trump thinks this is helping him in his presidential campaign, to persuade his groupies that he is being unfairly prosecuted/persecuted. They were alread persuaded, I suspect, but Trump thinks he needs to keep this scam going. He’s clearly not viewing his legal problems as legal problems but as campaign opportunities. He’s already burned any hope of being treated leniently in the E. Jean Carroll case.
With Tacopina gone, Trump was represented by the hopelessly bumbling Alina Habba. The judge rebuked her fourteen times yesterday. See also Alina Habba’s 5 Worst Horror Show Moments in Court. Some of this bumbling may be incompetence, but I’m betting some of it is her just following Trump’s orders. See, for example, Did Alina Habba Pay Attention in Law School? at The New Republic.
On Thursday, Habba got into another kerfuffle with Kaplan when she flubbed a line of questioning against Carroll, asking the columnist if she “makes a good amount of money” from her Substack.
“What’s ‘a good amount of money?’” interjected Kaplan, stopping Habba. “This is Evidence 101.”
The outburst is the result of days of questioning by Habba that has at times been redundant, unfounded, or inappropriate, leading to countless objections by Carroll’s legal team and interruptions by Judge Kaplan himself.
In another exchange on Thursday, Kaplan blew past a line of questioning pushed by Habba over Carroll’s Substack subscriber count.
“That was definitely asked yesterday,” Kaplan said.
“Number of subscribers?” Habba insisted.
“Eighteen hundred. Move on,” Kaplan retorted.
So while she may also be incompetent, I suspect she is following Trump’s orders to paint Carroll as an opportunist who is benefiting from the trial somehow. Only Trump is allowed to benefit from trials. And Tacopina resigned from the case rather than make a public fool of himself.
In other news: The most genuinely alarming thing yesterday was that the Supreme Court is getting ready to kneecap the ability of executive branch agencies to set and enforce regulatory policies. Federalist Society dollars at work, folks.
See also: WTF? Or, The Latest on Fani Willis. I don’t want to spend time on the Fani Willis allegations until there is someting resembling fact-based evidence.
Since every Trump accusation is a confession, Trump is telling us that he thinks the fundraising opportunities in his defamation trial are far larger than the potential costs. It’s hard for us mere mortals to comprehend, but there is no lower bound to his arrogance and capacity for evil.
"Tacopina has not said why he did this. I suspected that Trump was demanding he do something in court that would shred the rest of his legal career. That appears to be the case."
Of course anyone who works for Stump is fucked, lawyers, AG’s, Chiefs of staff, defense secretaries, advisers, body man, ground keepers, son’s daughters, wives. So any one with half a brain is going to bail (though it takes much less then half a brain to work for that stinking fuck stick in the first place). Funny thing is he only has like three – four lawyers and they are representing in all of the civil and criminal trials. All those trials require unique defense strategies, they are going up against formidable prosecutors but he only has a few schmucks, they rotate in and out? Mostly they appear non-stop on magat media. I don't think he's "hired the best people". I think in the end he's going to end up with one lawyer Alina Habba. She’s kind of “hot” but doesn't really seem to know what she's doing though she seems willing to say anything Stump wants. Me thinks she has already been assured a nice paying gig at FAUX. She's nice looking and the trumpkins love her, she's a sure thing on FAUX, all she needs is a short skirt and a big jesus cross necklace, look out Laura Ingraham!
Today AG Garland and his Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta held a press conference to summarize the report on the failures at Robb Elementary, Uvalde TX where 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered by some shithead with an AR-15 while four hundred armed cowards with Badges stood in the hallway and out on the street, sat in their cars with the party lights on, ate donuts for over an hour before they decided to stop the massacre. Even then they had to call in the feds (border patrol) to handle the situation while they watched. I watched the presser live and as I often do I scanned the “news” channels. Everyone carried the press conference live, cnn, msnbc, bbc, etc. Guess who didn’t bother to carry the press conference, FAUX. I guess this is typical, they don’t want to give any airtime to anyone in the Biden administration, can’t show them getting anything done! The families of those dead children deserve to have the results of DOJ’s report get some god damn airtime, a lot of airtime. To me FAUX not carrying the presser is news, the other networks should call them out, I would interview some of the families and ask them how they feel about FAUX burying the report, no airtime, FOX decide to just ignore it. But that won’t happen because the executives at all those networks are only interested in selling over priced pharmaceuticals, balance of nature and ED drugs! And the on air “talent” could fucking care less, they just want a payday. It’s a fucking outrage, silence by the other networks is complicity.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?533034-1/justice-department-releases-report-uvalde-school-shooting#
You raised an interesting question. I can't find any recent articles (less than seven months old) regarding how many lawyers Trump has. In the first half of '23. Trump's PAC had to report 27 million in legal fees. Unless Trump has located shysters, he's down to about ten for the four criminal cases. He's lost about a half-dozen lawyers in the last 14 months.
So Trump doesn't have a "dream team" by any stretch of the imagination. If he loses any more, that will become the basis of Trump's demand for delays. And that won't fly, though the court may offer to assign a public defender.
Trump does not have "strategy" but he does have instincts. He's presenting to MAGA that he, the great and powerful Trump, which is a line he stole from the Wizzard of Oz, can not be held to the standards of mere mortals.
I'm reading the book by Rachel Maddow on the history of American fascists. The similarities between the method of Hitler's rise and Trump's machinations are striking. I'm just getting into it however I'm getting a clear picture what makes MAGA truly fascist in a concrete way with an item-by-item matchup. Even though Maddow has not mentioned Trump or MAGA, (yet) the foundation for the argument is being made. What argument? It's the title, Prequel. The US is not in a new place – the pattern of fascism has not changed.
What I'm considering is how the US has changed in the last 90 years. (I'm 70 and I don't think I've taken note of the US for more than 55 years. But I know US history.) In my lifetime, we legalized interracial marriage, a huge no-no in Hitler's Nazi vision. We legalized same-sex marriage and young people have gotten the message regarding gender identity – it's your choice. Be who you are and seek the relationship that works for you. Individually. In my lifetime, the courts only recently tried to back away from women's rights with disastrous consequences in every election where voters have been able to assert their authority on women's rights.
Hitler had advantages Trump does not. First, the US "Brown Shirts" have been shut down. (relative to Hitler's thugs who killed literally hundreds of Hitler's perceived opponents in one night, June 30, 1934.) Trump loyalists don't have that kind of devotion. They are adept at "swatting" opponents with phone calls to police and threatening anonymous emails. Trump propaganda is being called out by the free press – not as well as I like but Trump has not silenced the opposition. Trump's allies are being disbarred, sued, and prosecuted. IMO, Trump is not running for president as much as he's running from prison.
To return to the topic of strategy, Trump is betting his ass that he can either win the 2024 election OR topple the government and assume power that way. Trump is on the outside – he can't make appointments to the Pentagon. Yes, some in the military would install Trump as king, but there weren't enough in 2020 which is why Trump loaded a U-Haul and moved to Florida with a bunch of secret documents. Biden has had four years to move Trump loyalists in the military out of key positions. There won't be a coup assisted by the military.
In my mind, I see Trump in the role of Princess Leia dictating a note, "Justice Clarance Thomas, you're my only hope." Sometime in the summer as criminal losses pile up and Trump finds out that MAGA mostly looks like Trump, old, fat, and full of hot air. At which point, Trump will ask Vlad if there's a dacha for rent near a golf course in Russia. Trump will sweeten the deal with copies of classified documents.
For anyone continuing to harbor any doubt of his guilt he's literally been caught red-handed!
https://radaronline.com/p/trump-red-hand-photo-explained-paper-cut/
Paper cut, strawberry jam, syphilis, take your pick. I'm fully expecting someone to suggest stigmata.
For God so loved the United States that he gave us Donald J Trump.
Does anyone know if it's legal for TFG to use his PAC to pay his legal expenses (and possibly his civil judgments?), and part (b) whether it is legal as long as he is an candidate but no longer if he drops out?
IMO, the story about how the "Supreme Court is getting ready to kneecap the ability of executive branch agencies to set and enforce regulatory policies" is far more terrifying than any of Trump's antics. This could undermine *every* aspect of government regulation, which has the Federalist wet dream & Holy Grail since the Powell Memo.
This will turn the USA into the perfect Corporate Libertarian Heaven – which is of course, physical hell for us mere people, who need food, water, air, and medicines which are not poisonous. Perhaps worse, it would end any hope of limiting AGW Climate Change (so emigration would offer only temporary protection).
Agree. I read something by someone trying to read the tea leaves, that it's possible the Supremes might not have enough votes to overturn, but it will be a nail-biter. The writer opines that Justice Amy Barrett is on the fence about this. Then again, she was on the fence about Roe v Wade – she thought overturning it was too radical – when Alito IIRC released a preview of the SCOTUS's decision to reverse Roe – a big scandal, which somehow forced her to play along.
FW all this is worth. But I agree it's terrifying stuff. The conservative wrecking ball continues swinging…
Billionaire justice at work.
Is it true or mostly true that Hamas knew what would happen after it conducted it's Oct. 7 operation? Is it true or mostly true that Trump knew what would happen if he behaved the way he did at the trial. I have heard claims that both are true or mostly so today…that both had a prediction of what the outcome of their action would be and thought it a good outcome for them. I am not convinced. Bin Laden wrote he was surprised at the outcome of 9/11. It is hard to think that Hamas understood what a horror would befall the West Bank and not abandon its plan. With Trump I would contend he shakes things up that are not going his way and plays whatever outcome he gets. He seems to have followers who will see whatever happens as a great plan and whatever happens as wonderful. None of his plans to overturn the election worked, yet he is still playing them as a success. All would have been fine if it had not been for Pence. He won't make that mistake next time.
To me it is more likely that both followed their guts and not their brains. If they prehended an outcome it was one they came to by magical thinking not by understanding what the future outcome was likely to be and angling for that. Shake things up and exploit whatever happens. That is my best guess on the plan of both. Other speculation is probably false or mostly false.