In his historic New York criminal trial, former President Donald Trump faces the prospect of some very real punishments—including fines and even prison time.
But in court in Manhattan on Tuesday, the former president was subjected to a different kind of punishment that seemed almost expressly designed to torment him: he had to sit silently as mean tweets about him were read aloud.
As prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred over the composition of the jury that will ultimately decide the hush money case, some of the prospective jurors’ past social media posts about the former president were debated for evidence of possible bias. As a result, for more than an hour the notoriously thin-skinned Trump was forced to listen to jokes about his appearance, his likeability, his intelligence, and—to use a phrase Team Trump first popularized—whether prosecutors should “lock him up.”
