In what has now become a daily procedure, an angry Donald Trump emerged from a lower Manhattan courthouse on Thursday to complain about the “very unfair” hush-money trial that will keep him busy for the next few weeks.
This time around, however, the former president came armed with props in the form of a massive stack of printed-out articles and opinion columns about how the criminal case against him is a “whopping outrage.”
Besides reading off a list of Fox News contributors who have railed against the trial, the ex-president grumbled about the temperature of the courtroom. “Everybody was freezing in there!” Trump exclaimed.
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Amidst the tumult that has marred the trial’s initial week, with two jurors already excused due to concerns that media disclosures could identify them, Thursday’s proceedings concluded with a 12-juror panel selected. Friday will now be dedicated to choosing the final five alternate jurors.
Slowly shuffling out of the courthouse a little after 5 p.m. local time, Trump carried a bundle of color printouts of various op-eds and immediately began unsurprisingly whining about the impact the trial was having on his presidential campaign.
“I am supposed to be in Georgia; in North Carolina, South Carolina. I’m supposed to be in a lot of different places campaigning, but I’ve been here all day,” he groused before turning to his stack of papers.
“It’s a whopping outrage and it is an outrage. Everybody is outraged by it,” he continued while thumbing through the pages.
Eventually, he began naming various publications, columnists and conservative legal experts who have declared that the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is weak. Trump is charged with allegedly falsifying business records after directing a payoff to adult film star Stormy Daniels to stay quiet about a sexual affair. The $130,000 payment to Daniels was made days before the 2016 election, prompting Bragg to accuse Trump of “election interference” by hiding this information from voters.
“Jonathan Turley, Gregg Jarrett, Andrew McCarthy, every one of them saying—they call it a zombie case, meaning there is no case,” Trump huffed, naming off several Fox News legal analysts. “These are all stories that have taken place over the last few days.”
The media-obsessed ex-president just kept flipping through his printouts while looking for Trump-friendly headlines to bellow to the gathered press. He appeared particularly elated when he found a year-old article from Rolling Stone in his stack.
“No friend of mine,” he said while taking a few seconds to read through the piece. “They don’t like, it says, they don’t like Bragg’s chances on this case. It’s a disgrace.”
After a few more moments of headline reading from the former president, he fumed about the thermostat setting in the courtroom.
“It is a shame,” he complained. “I am sitting here for days now, from morning until night in that freezing room. Everybody was freezing in there! And all for this. This is your result. It is very unfair.”
Apparently content that he had rattled off enough op-eds, Trump then concluded by running through a laundry list of well-worn talking points about the case being a political hitjob against him and how President Joe Biden is the one who should be facing prosecution.
“He’s the one who should be on trial. He’s a crook!” Trump asserted. “You’ve got a crooked president!”
