As the Donald Trump hush-money/fix-the-books trial begins, the question is not whether Trump is guilty or innocent.
Come on. You already know the answer to that one, which is why I’ve been surprised they’ve been able to so quickly seat seven jurors who can truthfully say they haven’t already made up their minds.
Are the potential jurors, in fact, being truthful? Do their social media posts tell a different story? Does filming a Joe Biden victory celebration outside your house count?
Let’s just say, in my case, I’m pretty sure Trump is as guilty as O.J. and leave it at that.
What we know is that Trump’s former fixer and convicted perjurer, Michael Cohen, paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money so that she wouldn’t go public with her accusation that she and Trump had sex during a Lake Tahoe golf tournament in 2006.
The timing of the accusation — which Trump denies — couldn’t have been worse, coming soon after the Access Hollywood videotape had landed as a direct hit on Trump’s campaign.
But the charge against Trump isn’t about hush money. It’s apparently legal in New York to pay hush money to porn stars, even when you are alleged to have had sex with one soon after your wife has given birth.
The charge is that Trump falsified business records to cover up the payments he made to reimburse Cohen. Yeah, it’s the coverup to the crime — even when it’s not a crime — that gets you every time.
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And what the prosecution will set out to prove — with testimony from the former National Enquirer publisher, with testimony from a Playboy model, from evidence shown in campaign texts, from evidence drawn from the long list of Trump lies — is that the payoff was in line with everything we know about how Trump conducted his 2016 campaign.
No, the real question is whether the verdict — you can choose among guilty, not guilty or a hung jury (which could happen if, say, a juror wakes up one day with a horse head in his bed) — will make any difference.
My guess is it won’t, at least not to the 2024 campaign. Even if Trump is convicted — and this is guaranteed to blow your mind every time — he could still legally be elected president.
And if there’s anything we’ve learned in the never-ending Trump saga, it’s that facts don’t matter; that chaos is normal; that Trump really could shoot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote; that nothing, however damning, seems to make any difference to the Trump-owned GOP.
This was made clear on the first day of the trial when lawyers were arguing about whether the prosecution could play the Access Hollywood videotape before the jury. You remember that one — Trump’s grab-‘em-by-the-vaginal-euphemism scandal.
Way back in 2016, it seemed that Trump’s vulgar bragging about accosting women would doom his campaign. I mean, even Cory Gardner was jumping off the bandwagon — until, that is, Trump won and Cory, along with most of the other GOP resisters, jumped back on.
If Trump didn’t lose in 2016 when Access Hollywood was fresh in voters’ minds, why would listening to a prosecutor read from the transcript — Judge Juan Merchan ruled that actually showing the video might be prejudicial — change anything today?
Did the fact that a jury in a civil trial found Trump had sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll change anything?
Did it change anything, in yet another civil trial, when it was found that Trump had fraudulently inflated his wealth in loan applications?
Did two impeachment trials stop Trump from accumulating 74 million votes?
And yet.
There is something different about this trial, even beyond the salacious bits we’ll be hearing day after day. There is the fact that this case — the first criminal trial ever for a president, past or present and (just guessing) future — is not just about money. Trump could go to prison.
And it’s not just about prison — there’s some doubt that would happen, whatever the verdict — but about the fact that Trump will be treated, more or less, like an actual criminal defendant, having to be in court every day court is in session.
Trump’s lawyers asked the judge if he could attend his son’s high school graduation in May. Merchan said he wasn’t sure.
The lawyers asked if Trump could skip court next week to attend the scheduled Supreme Court hearing on presidential immunity. The ruling may determine whether Trump’s trial for trying to subvert the 2020 election goes forward.
And yet, the judge wasn’t convinced.
It seems that Trump, who’s under a gag order, of course, because he can’t stop talking smack, actually is being treated like a criminal defendant should be. How long — and I’m considering starting a pool — before Trump blows?
To this point, Trump has been voluntarily attending trials, using them as campaign events, both to raise money and to paint himself not just as a victim of a scam, of a sham, of a witch hunt, but as a martyr willing to sacrifice himself for the MAGA cause.
When Trump left court on Monday, he was making the same case, except, if possible, with even more venom attached. That will be a daily occurrence, in the morning before the trial and again afterward, even as Trump rushes off to fit in late-night and weekend campaign events.
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On Tuesday morning, just as an example, Trump wrote that Merchan was a “Trump Hating Judge” who “won’t let me respond to people who are on TV lying and spewing hate all day long.” By Tuesday afternoon, the judge was warning him not to intimidate witnesses.
Whatever the judge does, this unprecedented trial, with its unprecedented defendant, will be chaotic. There’s little question about that.
But for Trump, it won’t begin and end there. Facing the expected testimony about cringeworthy Trumpian sex, with the gag order remaining in place, with every aspect of the case (including Trump’s Sleepy Don moment on Day One) under a 24/7 microscope — the trial will also be a daily humiliation.
Will that matter? Will any of it matter?
History says we should be skeptical. But history has never quite taken us down this path — with one mid-campaign felony trial underway, and three more felony trials still possible someday.
And it may take more than a mere verdict to know what matters and what doesn’t. In fact, we may not know for sure until the votes are counted in November.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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