Dems pin Trump in NYC courtroom and he just turns it into his own personal campaign stage

https://nypost.com/2024/05/12/opinion/dems-pin-trump-in-nyc-courtroom-and-
he-just-turns-it-into-his-own-personal-campaign-stage/

When Joe Biden flew to San Francisco on Thursday for some fancy 
fundraisers, reporters noted that all the televisions on Air Force One 
were tuned to MSNBC, where the chyron read: “Stormy Daniels wraps 7-plus 
hours of testimony in Trump hush money trial.”

The president might be enjoying the wall-to-wall coverage of his opponent 
stuck in a Manhattan courtroom, but it probably is not the electoral gift 
Biden imagines.

Ever the showman, Donald Trump has flipped the adversity of his lawfare 
travails into a triumph of free media hits worth almost $2 billion, 
according to data provided exclusively by his campaign.

With cameras banned inside the courtroom, the former president makes his 
own news when he turns up at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse at Centre 
Street each day.

Every morning and some afternoons, Trump stands in the draughty 15th-floor 
corridor outside courtroom 1530 and addresses the assembled press pack 
without notes for three to five minutes, delivering pithy political 
bullets on the news of the day, trashing Biden, Judge Juan Merchan and the 
lawfare that Democrats are waging against him.

His monologues, carried live by most TV networks and amplified online, 
have delivered his campaign an average of $260 million in earned (a k a 
free) digital media each day, according to a report by the Meltwater media 
monitoring agency, which estimates the equivalent cost of placing 
advertisements. 

The first day of the Trump trial, April 15, delivered a whopping $440 
million equivalent. The average weekly earned media during the trial has 
been $1.2 billion per week. 

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Dems.

The Meltwater figures cover only digital media. On TV, Nielsen ratings 
showed an initial boost in viewers in the first week of the trial for the 
most obsessed networks, CNN and MSNBC, of 30% and 6%, respectively.

Viewership fell in the second week because, without cameras in the 
courtroom, coverage relies on pundits giving breathless play-by-plays of 
Trump’s head movements or lip pursing. Breaking news! A new courtroom 
sketch! 

With an eye for optics, Trump delights in the fact that the 80-year-old 
Art Deco granite courthouse with its harsh fluorescent lights has turned 
out somehow to be a flattering stage set, and the vault-like ceilings make 
his voice resonate rather than echo. 

Every day, he takes pleasure in laying into “Trump-hating” Merchan, who 
has not recused himself despite the fact that his daughter Loren heads a 
political consulting firm that runs digital campaigns for Democratic 
candidates and posted a photo on social media of Trump behind bars. 

A gag order prevents Trump from mentioning Loren, so he contents himself 
with lambasting her father. “He’s a corrupt judge, and he’s totally 
conflicted.” 

He usually complains about being forced off the campaign trail and 
proclaims his innocence. 

“I should be right now in Pennsylvania and Florida, in many other states, 
North Carolina, Georgia, campaigning. … I’m not supposed to be here. I’m 
innocent, and I’m being held in this court with a corrupt judge who’s 
totally conflicted.”

His dais in court
And he pitches the promises of his second presidency, to “drill, baby 
drill, to bring energy down, to close up the border, to get rid of all the 
criminals that are being allowed into our country … They’re taking [them] 
out of mental institutions [and] jails … All of this is greatly affecting 
our country and very negatively. Now, we’re going to make America great 
again. Thank you very much.”

On Friday morning before court, Trump even took the opportunity to promote 
his rally the next day in Wildwood, NJ. He tried out some of the lines he 
would use at Wildwood, railing against the “horrible gag order” and 
reading aloud extracts from articles in the New York Post that he said 
declared the case a “legal catastrophe.”

“I’ll go now sit in that freezing courtroom for 8 or 9 hours and think 
about being on the campaign all day.”

Perhaps having seen the Meltwater figures, Trump extended his corridor 
remarks on Friday afternoon to 10 minutes and announced he was unafraid of 
jail.

Merchan is a “thug” who “wants to put me in jail.”

“And that could happen one day, and I’d be very proud to go to jail for 
our Constitution because what he’s doing is so unconstitutional … So fake, 
the whole case is fake. The judge is corrupt. It’s not a case. There’s no 
crime. … This is election interference. It all comes out of Washington.”

He gave a soliloquy on inflation: “It’s a tax on the American people due 
to gross incompetence.”

He said Biden “lies about everything, including his golf game” and that 
Biden and his donors are “against Israel.” 

All week, he used his media moments to smash Biden on the politics of the 
day, deciding the topics in his limo during the 4-mile drive downtown from 
his apartment atop Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. 

On Thursday, it was Israel. 

“If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of 
themselves. He’s totally abandoned Israel, as nobody can believe it. I 
guess he feels good about it because he did it as a political decision.”

It was campus protests on Tuesday. 

“The country is on fire. There are protests all over the country. I’ve 
never seen anything like this. Many graduation ceremonies are being 
canceled. … And we have a president that just refuses to talk because he 
can’t talk.”

It was Biden donors Monday.

“Many of the protesters are backed by Biden’s donors. OK, are you 
listening, Israel?”

Off the battleground
You get the feeling Trump revels in the fact he is getting more publicity 
in the courthouse than he would from standing in an Ohio cornfield. It is 
reminiscent of 2016, when he was financially outgunned by his adversaries 
but ended up with more media coverage.

His Wildwood rally went ahead Saturday in front of a whopping crowd of 
more than 100,000 attendees, according to official estimates, and proved 
to be an extended version of his courtroom diatribes, with bonus 
impersonations of Biden.

Of course, the big crowds and the earned media bonanza reflect the fact 
that Trump is a consummate entertainer who puts on a free show.

But 2020 showed that crowd numbers are no guarantee of electoral victory. 
The hard work is still to be done in the swing states. 

Overshadowing the unexpected upside of his courtroom travails is the fact 
that, while the media spotlight is fixed on Trump in New York, Democratic 
governors in the crucial battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and 
Pennsylvania are quietly using their powers to tilt the playing field in 
favor of Biden. 


-- 
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem.  It has none.

No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.  
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
fiasco, President Trump.  

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed 
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.