MSM floated a report that Trump might stand with counsel during sidebars, likely to close the nonverbal distance between him and potential jurors. Intimidation or getting “vibes” like a knowing wink? More stunts. Perhaps even clumsy micromanaging.
Donald Trump wants to hear every question the judge asks prospective jurors in a highly unusual request from the start of his hush money trial.
The former president asked Judge Juan Merchan to allow him to stand beside the bench to listen in on one-on-one conversations with individuals who might be tasked with deciding on whether to convict Trump of falsifying business records to conceal payments that flowed to adult movie actress Stormy Daniels in an effort to cover up an affair,
CNN legal analyst Paula Reid said the request put his attorneys in a difficult spot.
"He's the client from hell, right?" Reid said. "He's a pain in the neck. I'm sure that his lawyers would prefer that he not be there, so that they will be free to make the legal arguments they need to make and not necessarily be performing for an audience of one."
Judge: "The defendant in this case is MISTER Donald Trump, who is seated to my right."
Trump live campaign appearances can only happen in the evenings, Wednesdays, and weekends. The rest will left to his usual grifting instruments. Not really a constraint in an election year, considering he’s continuing the same con.
Could you be an impartial juror on a Donald Trump trial?
Listen, I can’t stand Donald Trump, so I guess the answer is no. I mean, he’s as crooked as you can find in a person.
What’s your strongest impression of him?
Everything he does is fraudulent.
What would you say if they said only think about the evidence in the courtroom?
Well, the evidence is there, so I don’t know how he has everybody hoodwinked in every other state and the Republican Party and everything. So, the evidence is there, and we’ve wasted so much money and so much time going around and around trying to claim that he’s innocent and everything that he’s done in the last number of years.
For shareholders like Jerry Dean McLain, investing in Truth Social is less a business calculation than a statement of faith in the former president and the business traded under his initials, DJT.
Even the company’s plunging stock price — and the chance their investments could get mostly wiped out — doesn’t seem to have shaken that faith. The company has lost $3.5 billion in value since its public debut last month.
And in two years, Truth Social has attracted a tiny fraction of the traffic other platforms see, according to estimates from the analytics firm Similarweb — one of the only ways to measure its performance, given that the company says it “does not currently, and may never, collect, monitor or report certain key operating metrics used by companies in similar industries.”
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Trump Media has boasted that it has benefited from a flood of “retail investors” — small-time and amateur shareholders betting their personal cash. Its merger partner, Digital World Acquisition, said its shares were bought by nearly 400,000 retail investors, and Trump Media’s chief executive, Devin Nunes, told Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that the company had added over 200,000 new ones in the past couple of weeks.
Loomer, (not Linda) Loomer