As part of her column explaining why Donald Trump showed up for a hearing at a Manhattan’s federal court where his lawyers made an appeal to a three- judge panel to toss writer E. Jean Carroll’s first civil trial verdict where he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, MSNBC's Lisa Rubin noted it started off in a disconcerting manner.
Before getting to her larger point that the former president likely showed up as part of a fundraising ploy to get his rabid fans to send him more money to be used to pay his multi-million dollar Carroll penalty by playing the real victim in a press conference afterwards, Rubin pointed out two "notable" Trump actions that she found disturbing.
Pointing out that the former president showed up for the hearing — which he was not obligated to attend — with a phalanx of lawyers and his Secret Service protective detail and reported, "before the argument began, Trump did two notable — and chilling — acts."
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"First, while still standing, he wheeled around and surveyed the gallery of assembled press and members of the public," she wrote before continuing, "First, while still standing, he wheeled around and surveyed the gallery of assembled press and members of the public. Eyes narrowed, he glowered in an echo of trial days past."
She added, "Then, taking his seat at the head of a table immediately behind his legal team, he turned to his right, seeming to appraise a tall blonde seated at a table directly across the room. But Carroll, in a nipped-waist skirt suit with her hair tied back with a girlish, satiny bow, stared straight ahead, just as she had for nearly all of her two trials."
She went on to make her point that the grandstanding press conference that followed, "|Trump and his campaign advisers well understand the perverse relationship between his perceived victimization through the civil and criminal cases against him, on the one hand, and his popularity among his base, on the other. And they recognize that Trump’s fundraising peaks when he is — or simply portrays himself to be — in serious legal peril."
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