Do people really want someone who acts like this in a federal court room to be the president of the United States?
I guess he’s the best the Republican party can do…
Roughly 20 minutes after walking into the courtroom, Donald Trump stormed out of closing arguments in a civil trial to determine how much money he owes E Jean Carroll for repeatedly defaming her.
The former president arrived in federal court in Manhattan on Friday morning after briefly testifying in his defence on Thursday afternoon, after which he unleashed more attacks and potentially defamatory statements about the former Elle magazine columnist.
In her closing statement, Ms Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan told jurors that the former president “acts as if these rules of law just don’t apply to him.”
His attacks didn’t stop after he was found liable for defamation and sexual abuse in a $5m jury verdict, she noted.
“Not at all,” Ms Kaplan said. “Not even for 24 hours.”
Mr Trump then stood up from the defence table, where he was seated next to attorney Alina Habba, and walked out of the hearing, to which he had arrived late.
“The record will reflect that Mr Trump just rose and walked out of the courtroom,” US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said.
Mr Trump returned to the courtroom for defence closing arguments from Ms Habba.
As he returned to the courtroom, his Truth Social account fired off several posts repeating incendiary and potentially defamatory claims about the case, claiming he is a victim of “extortion” and falsely labelling the case a “Joe Biden-directed Election Interference Attack” against him.
This is outrageous behavior for anyone. Coming from a presidential candidate is just insane. Or, at least, it would be insane if the GOP base wasn’t a cult.
I seriously doubt this will endear him to the jury. But maybe he’s counting on the appeals dragging out as long as possible, perhaps in the hopes that Carroll dies before he has to pay out any money? I don’t know. I’m sure he believes this helps him with his ecstatic followers but I’m not sure they’re even hearing about this. They don’t cover his trials very closely in right wing media.
But normal people are hearing about this. And this petulant, childish behavior may not play as well with those GOP-leaning independents and suburban moms.