The civil trial to determine how much Donald Trump will be punished for decades of fraud in New York kicked off this week, and one thing became immediately clear: The former reality TV host really thought he'd be able to turn this into a campaign spectacle.
Even though he had no obligation to show up in court, Trump appeared with great fanfare Monday morning, luring a bevy of cameras to the hallway outside of the courtroom. Every chance he got, he held forth at length into the microphones, clearly expecting rapt audiences to hang onto his every word, swooning at the great injustice of watching a lifelong con artist finally face the music. After three days, however, even Trump quietly concluded that this was less "Apprentice: Season One" and more the season where Leeza Gibbons beat Ian Ziering for the prize of never having to talk to Donald Trump again. (I'm assuming. Like nearly every American, I didn't watch it.) Unable to generate interest in his incoherent ravings outside the courtroom doors, Trump turned tail and fled back to Florida. Hopefully, his body being ejected from New York is a precursor to the end of all his commercial business in the state.
"The Donald Trump show is over," New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters Wednesday. "This was nothing more than a political stunt."
Trump's already severe narcissism has been intensified through years of cheering MAGA crowds and powerful people kissing his ass. The result was that he actually seemed to believe he would look tough and cool for the cameras. Instead, America was treated to a series of photos of him looking like a sulky child in court, accompanied by reports that he acted like a fidgeting, impatient toddler throughout the proceedings. During recess, he ranted at cameras, ping-ponging between racist and sexist vitriol towards James and endless whining about in-the-weeds details that even the biggest legal junkies don't care about.
Unable to generate interest in his incoherent ravings outside the courtroom doors, Trump turned tail and fled back to Florida.
James, meanwhile, has been winning the media war by projecting the effortless confidence that Trump imagines he brings. Though it does help that, unlike Trump, she can speak in complete sentences and also get to the point, instead of rambling on about boring minutia. Trump seems to understand that the impression left, at the end of the week, is that she ran his sorry ass out of town. We know this because he's unleashing protest-too-much posts on Truth Social, claiming that he's the one who rejected New York, not the other way around.
"Companies are Fleeing! It" he wrote of New York City, calling it a "rat's nest" and screeching "MURDERS & VIOLENT CRIME HIT UNIMAGINABLE RECORDS."
Obviously, he's setting himself up to pretend that, when his businesses are shuttered, that it was a voluntary action on his part, as opposed to a court-ordered liquidation. But it is worth taking a moment to note that crime in Manhattan was exponentially worse in the 1980s when Trump first started using fraud and shell games to build up his real estate empire on the island. In the era when Trump was riding high in Manhattan, the murder rate was over five times what it is now. So no, he's not "Fleeing!" a crime-ridden city. He's getting the boot.
No doubt, the argument will be that Trump's failure to get the attention he desired is due to the circus in the House of Representatives. It's unquestionable that the historic ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., did pull mainstream media attention, and it certainly was more of a riveting drama than witness testimony about bookkeeping games Trump used to bamboozle tax assessors and bankers. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump is lashing out right now at Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for stealing Trump's thunder by filing the motion to vacate McCarthy from his seat.
It's a testament to how his narcissism has swollen like a tick full of blood that he hung in for three whole days, even though it was clear in the first few hours that this wasn't going to be the theatrical experience he was imagining.
But the truth is that Trump's efforts to hijack the court proceedings were failing even before Gaetz made his move. I watched the cable news coverage Monday morning, as Trump made his way to court. Initially, the networks were game to turn this into a 3-ring circus. CNN even had the drone camera following Trump's motorcade to court. There was breathless commentary as various players walked by the camera banks into the courtroom, with Trump's people clearly under instructions to grin for the cameras if this were a red carpet at an awards show.
Then the supposedly big moment of Trump's arrival came, and the whole pageant fell apart. Trump only got a minute or two into his diatribe, when both MSNBC and CNN realized it was brutally boring TV. So they cut his sound and talked over him. Fox kept the audio feed live, but almost certainly to avoid future Trump tantrums. Listening to Trump prattle on about himself is tough on a good day, even for his own followers. But it's impossible to pay him any mind when he's whining about how his net worth is [fill in lie] and not [what it actually is] and how he wants a jury (even though he waived the right) and how everyone is out to get him. He didn't even really bother, at least in the brief parts that went live on-air, to pretend his supposed victimhood is about his supporters. It was just an extended, hard-to-follow crybaby sesh.
It's a testament to how his narcissism has swollen like a tick full of blood that he hung in for three whole days, even though it was clear in the first few hours that this wasn't going to be the theatrical experience he was imagining. But a good sign Trump knew, on some level, that this wasn't going well was in his pathetic effort to start a conspiracy theory about Justice Arthur Engoron's law clerk having an affair with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
It's not especially mysterious what happened here. The law clerk, Allison Greenfield, has been sitting next to Engoron on the bench as he presides over the case. Trump, who has been squirming and glowering, almost certainly fixated on this pretty young woman and seethed that anyone of the female persuasion has any power over him. Since he can't corner her in a Bergdorf dressing room, Trump found another way to give in to his urge to attack any woman who makes him feel small: lying about her sex life. Whether he or some shameless staffer nabbed the photo of her with Schumer at some meet-and-greet, it's obvious that he was being impulsive, in sharing the picture with the accompanying lie pulled directly out of his rear.
No doubt it was a mixture of boredom and misogyny that drove this "decision." It also suggests Trump was getting anxious about his inability to turn this trial into a freakshow. Even by his low standards, attempting to titillate his elderly fanbase with clearly false gossip about a woman they've never heard of was a stretch. Fox News, deferential to Trump's every dumb whim, tried to make something out of the spontaneously generated Trumpian sexual fantasy. But the main result was the judge putting a gag order on Trump and making him take down the post. The news cycle became less "look at this crazy thing Trump did!" and more "turns out it isn't impossible to tell Trump to STFU."
In the end, Trump tried to pivot to more familiar bait for his small-dollar suckers, er, donors: anti-semitic conspiracy theories.
The pivot suggests Trump's team just wasn't getting very far with the "look at Trump in court!" gambit. Even his supporters are bored and just want to hear more about how George Soros is out to get them.
It is, of course, a great relief that Trump decided it wasn't worth sitting for hours in hair and makeup every day to rant at cameras while no one is listening. It certainly doesn't mean Trump is over. His base continues to be endlessly gullible, forking over cash to the alleged "billionaire" so he can pay his legal bills, and they really loved giving him money because he got a mugshot in Georgia. But this week was a welcome reminder that Trump's tactics of lying, threatening, and creating a spectacle have limited value in the courtroom setting. Courts require sitting still and being quiet, two skills that any 2-year-old can easily best Trump at. There's a good chance this is the first sign that Trump will find rapidly diminishing returns in trying to turn the various trials that await him into political opportunities.