“Sir, could you please sit down?”
On Tuesday, Donald J. Trump stood to leave a Manhattan criminal courtroom as Judge Juan M. Marchan concluded a scheduling discussion.
However, the judge had not yet adjourned or left the courtroom. Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the owner of his own company, is used to setting his own pace. Still, when Judge Marchand advised him to leave, the former president sat down without saying a word.
The moment highlighted a central reality for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Over the next six weeks, those who value control and seek to shape the environment and outcomes to their will will have little control over anything.
All of the circumstances in which the former president appears in court daily as a defendant in the People v. Donald J. Trump case at 100 Center Street are distasteful to him. An environment encased in amber that evokes New York City’s crime-ridden past. Lack of control. Details of a case in which he was accused of falsifying a porn star’s business records to hide her compensation to prevent allegations of an affair with her from emerging during the 2016 election.
Of the four criminal cases Trump faces, this is the most serious personal one. And those close to him are candid when speaking privately about his reaction. He looks around every day and says he can’t believe he needs to be there.
Asked about former President Trump’s distaste for the incident, campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said Trump “proved he remains defiant” and called the incident “political law.” I called it.
He sits in a dilapidated courtroom that was so cold late last week that the lead attorney complained respectfully to the judge about it. Trump hugged his arms to his chest and told his aides: “I’m cold.”
For the first few minutes of each day during jury selection, a small group of still photographers were ushered into Part 59 on the 15th floor of the courthouse. Mr. Trump is obsessed with being seen as a strong person and being seen in general, adjusting his suit jacket and contorting his face into a jutting-chin scowl to make sure they are in front of him. I prepared for him to rush at me. But by the end of the day Friday, Mr. Trump was haggard and wizened, his gait off-center and his eyes sunken.
Mr. Trump often seemed to fade into the background in the bright, wood-paneled room, with harsh neon lighting and the constant smell of sour breath mixed with coffee.
His face was visible to dozens of reporters watching on a large monitor with a closed-circuit camera mounted on the defense table in an overflow room. He whispered to his lawyer, nudged him for attention, flipped through stacks of papers, and appeared to nod off at least twice during the morning session. (Aides have publicly denied that he fell asleep.) Nodding, which sometimes happens to various people during trials, including jurors, is a sign that he was thoroughly It shows the weakness of the public that has been working hard. avoid.
Trials are mundane in nature, involving rigid routines and long periods of inactivity. Trump has always avoided this kind of bureaucratism, from his 20s to his time in the Oval Office, by avoiding rigid schedules and other people’s practices and structures.
The mediocrity of the court is as if it has swallowed Mr. Trump. For decades, Trump tried to project an image of greatness, riding from reality TV studios to the White House.
When the first panel of 96 potential jurors was brought into the chamber last Monday afternoon, Trump disappeared among the jurors seated in the jury box and throughout the well rows of the courtroom. It looked like. The judge made it clear that he was prioritizing juror time, even at the expense of the former president’s expenses.
Communications advisers and aides who help boost Trump’s morale have been removed from their seats. For years, Natalie Harp, a former host on the right-wing news network OAN, carried a portable printer around with her, producing a flurry of uplifting articles and social media posts about Trump. But they were either in the second row behind the defense bench or a few rows back in the courtroom and were unable to speak to Trump during the trial.
It’s hard to remember a time when Trump had to sit back and listen to insults without using social media or a press conference to fight back. And it’s just as hard to remember that he was ever forced to be bored for so long.
Those close to him are worried about how he will handle a situation where he has little to do as he sits for weeks, with key testimony expected in just a few days. It’s been decades since he’s had to spend so much time in close proximity to anyone other than his family, staff or legion of fans.
Over the next six weeks or so, Trump will have to endure more, including hearing prosecutors ask witnesses uncomfortable questions about their private lives in open court. He is scheduled to face a hearing on Tuesday over whether a judge agrees with prosecutors that he repeatedly violated orders prohibiting him from publicly criticizing witnesses and others.
For most of the time, Trump was forced to sit at a table without access to a cell phone, and as jurors were asked their opinions about Trump, they watched prosecutors describe him as a criminal. I am forced to listen. Some of those opinions were negative, and one potential juror was made to read out old social media posts accusing him of being a sociopath and an egoist. The only time he smiled was when potential jurors mentioned his favorite work.
The highly publicized plan was for Mr. Trump to act as a candidate despite the trial and use the entire trial as a staging post to argue for a weaponized justice system.
But Trump’s only political event in New York last week was a stop in an upper Manhattan shopping district to highlight the borough’s crime rate. The appearance seemed to breathe life into him, but it also felt more like a mayoral candidate standing still than an expected presidential candidate. Some advisers, aware that Mr. Trump appears to be in decline, are pushing for more and larger events around the New York area.
Many in Mr. Trump’s wide base of supporters are pessimistic that the trial will end in a hanging or a miscarriage of justice, and see an outright acquittal as virtually impossible. They are bracing for conviction not because they are giving up legal grounds, but because they believe Manhattan’s overwhelmingly Democratic jurors will turn against the polarizing former president. .
But the feeling shared by many of his advisers is that the process could be as damaging to him as a conviction. They believe the process itself is a punishment.
