Donald Trump’s trial for paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels is just getting started—but Trump doesn’t seem to understand what exactly he’s in for.
Last week, after the court spent several days selecting jurors, Trump took to his right-wing social media platform, Truth Social, to complain. “This Trial is a Long, Rigged, Endurance Contest,” he wrote, “dealing with Nasty, Crooked People, who want to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY. MAGA2024!”
As journalist Helen Kennedy points out on Bluesky, Trump’s claim that the trial is an “endurance contest” was pretty hilarious when he had only been in court for four days.
Some criminal trials can last as little as a week or two, but Trump’s case is guaranteed to stretch longer than that, possibly going into mid-June. Then Trump has all those other indictments and felony charges to deal with.
To be fair, the trial hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park for Trump so far. Last week, Trump was forced to listen to insulting tweets that prospective jurors had written about him. Rumors began to circulate that he was farting and falling asleep during the trial.
Plus, the trial itself only began opening arguments this week, and things are already going pretty badly for Trump’s case. Trump is accused of interfering in the 2016 election by paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and working to prevent negative stories about himself from reaching the press. On Tuesday, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified for the prosecution, telling the court that he had worked to help Trump’s presidential campaign by using a “catch and kill” strategy: buying the rights to negative stories for the tabloid, then burying them instead of printing them. The prosecution is seeking to prove that Trump sought to interfere with the election, and Pecker’s admission that their goal was to help his campaign is pretty damning.
Then there’s the gag order that Trump is continually defying by publicly attacking witnesses and jurors. The possibility that Trump will serve jail time for violating the gag order is unlikely, but not impossible, and Justice Juan M. Merchan told Trump’s legal team that they were “losing credibility” with the court when they challenged the order.
If Trump is already feeling the heat of the trial after one week, he’s in for a very long couple of months.
(featured image: Pool / Getty)
