Where’s the Donald Trump we used to know?
For all the talk of how Donald Trump would seize the moment, the moment went unseized.
For the past week, rumours circulated that the former president would demand to be handcuffed – ideally, in his eyes, cuffed with his hands behind his back rather than in front like other white-collar criminals such as in the arrest of the Trump Organisation’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. He wanted a spectacle, but the spectacle didn’t happen. It was said he would make a speech before the courthouse, but that opportunity passed him by. We briefly saw him pump a fist to the crowd outside Trump Tower and then wave again before he entered the Manhattan courthouse, but it was perfunctory grandstanding. Once he was inside, there was little to see. There was no mugshot. We saw him walk through some doors and then into the courtroom.
What we were left analysing were small details. Trump looked dour. It’s hard to recall a time when he looked this bad. Perhaps once, when President, late at night, when a dishevelled Trump emerged from a helicopter to walk to the White House. He’s usually good at maintaining a front. Trump has Mussolini’s habit of raising his chin when looking defiant or itching for a fight. Inside the courthouse, his chin was lowered. He resembled the traumatised child who it’s said lives inside all bullies. When he first emerged after his arrest walking to the courtroom, he looked vacant. Shellshocked. Another small detail was the way the court official let the door swing back on Trump. The former president didn’t seem to expect it. How often are doors held open for him? Not on Tuesday. It was like reality hit him in the face, almost literally.
Photos were taken inside the court. Trump again looked deflated. Round-shouldered and distant, he stared into the camera. A broken man or an angry man? It was hard to tell, but the body language was again different to anything we’re accustomed to seeing.
The process in the court took a long time. Trump sounded exasperated when the judge explained how he should not shout out during the process. “I know,” he is reported to have said and sighed. We expected that process to last a few minutes. It was closer to an hour as the defence and prosecution argued. We know now that this is going to be a long trial. Trump is next expected in court (for this trial, at least) in December, which pushes it much deeper into the nomination process and ramps up the politics. We also know the charges: 34 felonies of falsifying records to cover up a crime. The indictment does not seem as serious as experts anticipated (a conspiracy charge was noticeably absent), though one charge involving tax does appear to be more straightforward.
Legal analysis was at one on the matter: even if it was surprising that the Manhattan prosecutors hadn’t gone further, their logic appeared sound. Rather than being too ambitious, Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has decided to charge what they are more certain of winning. The charges aren’t around the actual crime of breaking the rules of campaign finance but, rather, focus on local New York laws around the cover-up. Comparisons to the trial of Al Capone are justified. The Chicago gangster committed many heinous deeds in his decades-long rule but all it took was a charge of tax evasion to bring him down. It might well be that simply charging Trump with these much less serious crimes will be enough to end his political career.
Trump didn’t look at the cameras when he emerged and was soon on his way to the airport to fly back to Florida. Later in the day, he would address his loyal fans at Mar-a-Lago. Back home, Trump was different again. He did not seem particularly heedful of the judge’s warning about lowering his rhetoric. If anything, this was Trump dialled up to eleven as he attacked a long list of enemies including, it now seems, the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan. Loren Merchan’s “crime” is to work for a digital company that has been active in Democrat campaigns.
By portraying the entire legal system as being out to “Get Trump”, the former president is engaged in a high-risk strategy, even more so given that both Trump sons, Don Jr and Eric, had been posting pictures of the judge’s daughter to social media earlier in the day. In the pantomime of Trumpworld, America goes from a perfect and prosperous nation to a nation “going to hell” in the space it takes to flick a light switch. Politically this rhetoric is proven to work (well, at least among the 76 million people who voted for him in 2020). In just the space of a couple of weeks, his poll numbers have gone up by 12%. Fox News, which had been cooling on him, appears to have finally acknowledged his residual support among the Republican base, as well as the weakness and limited appeal of Ron DeSantis.
This rhetoric will not, however, work for Trump legally. We can be no more certain that he will be found guilty, even less confident in knowing if he’ll ever see the inside of a jail. But that next court day in December is distant. If Tuesday night’s speech established the tone of Trump’s campaign throughout the long summer, it would be surprising if Trump – or at the very least his lawyers – weren’t called back to that Manhattan courthouse. He walks a very fine line between exploiting his legal jeopardy and putting himself into further trouble with the judge. It would not be the Trump of the past ten years if he didn’t at some point cross that line and keep on straying.
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