Donald Trump's lawyers tried to present the former president as a "family man" to defend him from allegations in his hush money trial involving an adult film star, and MSNBC's Claire McCaskill guffawed at the claim as preposterous.
Lawyers delivered opening statements Monday in the trial, and while prosecutors laid out their case showing that Trump allegedly conspired to pay off adult film star Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence and then falsified business records to hide the payments, the former president's attorneys insisted he'd done nothing wrong.
"The prosecutors did an opening that was a very strong narrative, a timeline, promising hard evidence, corroboration, phone records, documents, in addition to witnesses," McCaskill told "Morning Joe." "The defense, what did they do? They said Donald Trump is a family man."
"Seriously?" she added. "I mean, you know, the jury is going, wait a minute, I think he traded out lies like he changed his shirts, he committed adultery all through his life. These are New York juries, they've seen the press for decades about the fact that he's not a family man. Where was Melania? How do you have a criminal trial with sexual conduct as the essence of the case in so many ways and not have your wife there, then stand up and say you're a family man?"
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McCaskill said the opening statement sounded like Trump had wrote it himself, and she said that weakened his defense.
"They went on to say that he did nothing wrong, he did nothing wrong -- his business was perfect," she said. "He was a great businessman, he did nothing wrong. A smart defense attorney, you have a normal client, would have stood up and said, 'Hey, you know, he's made some mistakes, but this is not a felony.' That's what a smart defense attorney would have done if he had a client that would let him do that. Unfortunately, these defense attorneys can't do that because Trump won't let them. They have got to say he's perfect. They've got to lie just like Michael Cohen did for him."
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