The world, as you may have noticed, is on fire.
The war in Gaza.The showdown between Biden and Netanyahu. The protests on campus. The war in Ukraine, which now seems more like the all-but-forgotten war in Ukraine unless you happen to, uh, live there.
Did I mention the House of Representatives vs. Marjorie Taylor Greene? If I did, I apologize.
And then there is the New York City courtroom from which a porn star testifies about that time she swatted a well-known tabloid figure and reality-TV-show host — who would, unaccountably, one day become president and, even more unaccountably, might well become president again — on the butt with a magazine that features his face on the cover.
The funny thing — not in a ha-ha way, but more in a tragicomic way — is that what’s going on in that courtroom, with its days of “salacious” testimony, may be the most important thing happening today.
I only wish it were televised, because what we’re not quite seeing — but what we rely on reporters from the courtroom to relay to us — is Donald Trump as Donald Trump in all his unhinged, unabashed, sleazy, sordid, narcissistic unglory.
What is televised — for instance, Trump’s daily post-court rant to the press — tells the story well enough, as he calls the judge and the DA corrupt and worse. On Friday, he took the time to charge that Joe Biden lied about his golf game. Yes, the man who would be president — again — is not just unhinged and unabashed, but also remarkably petty. Sadly, that’s not against the law.
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The thing is, this is the same Donald Trump that approximately half the country either pretends not to see or — and I can’t decide which is worse — does see and somehow thinks that’s what a president should look like.
Could this trial actually change anything?
The short answer is probably not. Nothing changed when a jury found, in a civil trial, that Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. Even if Trump is convicted — and there’s a reasonable chance he might be — that wouldn’t necessarily diminish Trump’s presidential prospects.
There’s every chance that MAGA world would see a conviction as simply proof that Trump is, in fact, the victim of a Biden-weaponized witch hunt.
But the trial is not just a criminal trial, in which Trump is accused of fixing the books in order to cover up the fact that he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money so she wouldn’t go public with her allegation that she and Trump had had sex.
Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer who seems to be just as sleazy as his longtime boss, is expected to take the stand Monday. I’m guessing the details he provides of the payoff to Daniels will be difficult to discredit. But as in the case of Daniels, I assume Trump’s defense team will be left trying to discredit the witness rather than the actual testimony.
Discrediting Cohen wouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world. On Friday, the judge told the prosecutors to rein in Cohen, ordering him not to taunt Trump again before the trial resumes. Cohen was last seen in a TikTok video in which he’s wearing a T-shirt showing Trump behind bars.
As much as a criminal case, though, this trial is also a morality play. And not because of the sex. We’re grownups after all. The tut-tutting about Daniels’ so-called salacious testimony — she said, gasp, that Trump didn’t wear a condom and that they had sex in the missionary position — is rich in a world where we can see video of congresspeople canoodling with their date in public.
If Daniels is believable — and is there anyone who still believes Trump when he says he didn’t have sex with that woman? — she’s not just telling the story of a serial adulterer. No one knows the actual count of presidential adulterers, but it’s pretty high. Even Jimmy Carter admitted he had lust in his heart.
In Trump’s case, he is alleged to have had hotel-penthouse sex with a porn star a month after Melania — who, by the way, has been nowhere near the courthouse — gave birth to their son, Barron. That’s adultery with a star.
But the most disturbing part of Daniels’ testimony had far less to do with sex — or with hush money, or with the National Enquirer’s catch-and-kill alliance with Trump — than the fact that Daniels says she was intimidated by Trump while having sex.
She was careful to say that Trump had not threatened her, either physically or vocally, but said instead that he had exercised an “imbalance of power,” that he was much bigger and older — 30-some years older — and that he was “blocking the way” when she considered leaving the bedroom upon seeing him on the bed in his boxer shorts.
Daniels said she thought she might have “blacked out” during sex. She was sure, though, that she was shaken by the incident.
After Daniels’ testimony, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche called for a mistrial, saying she had “embarrassed” Trump and that her testimony was meant to “inflame the jury.”
Judge Juan Merchan didn’t laugh Blanche out of the court — as I’d have been tempted to, given that Trump is the GOAT of inflamers — but he did deny what was Trump’s second bid for a mistrial.
What Daniels was doing — as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank put it — was “pull(ing) a Trump on Trump.” As Milbank wrote, Trump is the one who plays the role of “chaos agent” while the rest of us can only watch. In this trial, as Daniels caused the chaos, Trump could only sit and glower.
As many have noted, this is not the perfect case for trying Trump. He faces, of course, three other criminal trials, including the one directly addressing January 6, but it seems all but certain that none of them will begin before the November election.
This is the trial we have. It’s serious enough. And the case is simple enough. Following the release of the Access Hollywood tapes — in which Trump brags about his ability to grab women wherever he chooses — Trump was desperate not to have the Stormy Daniels story come out. It might well have cost him the election.
And that’s the truly tragic part. There was a time, way back in 2016, when Trump could still shock us with his behavior. You remember there were Republican politicians, including Cory Gardner, who were saying they wouldn’t vote for him.
Eight years later, nothing Trump does can shock us. Yes, his behavior, over time, has been normalized, but it’s more than that. Yes, the MAGA crowd has basically become a cult. But it’s also more than that.
Trump is on trial not just for his sins, but for our sins, too, and especially the sins of those Republicans who are primed to choose Trump for a third time as their presidential nominee.
Our trial doesn’t come until November 5. And the jury, I’m afraid, is still very much out.
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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