With Donald Trump just feet away, a potential juror in the criminal case against him summed up the experience in just three words. “This is bizarre,” she said, with just a hint of a seasoned New York accent.
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It was bizarre. There was a potential juror who once spent the night at one of Trump’s law houses more than a decade ago (Trump’s team used one of its preemptive strikes to remove the juror). The microphones didn’t work. The proceedings had to start over when Judge Juan Merchan realized that a court reporter had not immediately arrived. And the temperature in the courthouse was so frigid that Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, asked Merchan if it would be possible to raise the temperature “just one degree.”
Merchan said no. “It would probably rise 30 degrees,” Merchan said. “It’s cold, there’s no question it’s cold, but I’d rather be a little cold than be sweaty, and those are really the choices.”
Trump would also come out of court at the end of the day and complain about the temperature in the courtroom. “I’ve been sitting here for days now, from morning until late at night, in that freezing cold room. Freezing. Everybody was in there freezing and everything,” he said.
Today was just day three of a massive trial that is expected to last six weeks once a jury is selected. Donald Trump was central to this. Quiet. Disarmed from televisions and social media, forced to sit expressionless during a grueling long day in a dull Manhattan courtroom.
This wasn’t Donald Trump, the business magnate, or Donald Trump, the 45th president. It was Donald Trump, the defendant.
Trump was far from the comforts of the White House and Mar-a-Lago as he sat in the courtroom at 100 Center Street. He had nowhere to go and nothing to say; he was imprisoned. It was a grim reminder of the long haul Trump faces over the next two months as he faces 34 charges of falsifying company records.
As potential jurors, seated just a few feet away, offered critical assessments of him and his presidency, the former president, known for his inability to let even the smallest insult go unanswered, sat in silence. As his attorney Susan Necheles read old social media posts from a potential juror that were highly critical of Trump, he sat quietly.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that Trump has been tamed or humiliated. His Truth Social report is full of criticism of the legal proceedings, both from his team and himself. Shortly after the court convened Thursday, prosecutors said Trump violated a silence order in the case seven more times; the order prohibits him from making threats against jurors or potential witnesses.
“It’s ridiculous and it has to stop,” said prosecutor Christopher Conroy.
The effort was a reminder that even if Trump remains silent while in the courtroom, outside of it he will continue to use every tool at his disposal.
