Truth Social founder, failed businessman, and flop POTUS Donald Trump has been attempting to shitpost his way through an avalanche of legal troubles. Beset by as many as four separate court cases, Trump’s solution has mostly been to whine about it a lot on social media—often taking aim at prosecutors and judges involved in the cases. This strategy has led to numerous gag orders—usually to little effect.
On Monday, Trump took his shitposts offline and into the real world when he was forced to take the witness stand in a New York fraud case. Hours before his court appearance, Trump laid the groundwork for what was sure to be a productive judicial session by verbally excoriating everybody involved via his social media platform, Truth Social.
“Getting ready to head to the Downtown Lower Manhattan Courthouse to testify in one of the many cases that were instigated and brought by my POLITICAL OPPONENT, Crooked Joe Biden, through agencies and surrogates, for purposes of ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” Trump posted on the site. “Got a really Biased, Nasty, Club controlled, but often overturned, Judge, a Racist, Evil, and Corrupt Attorney General…A dark day for our Country. WITCH HUNT!”
Once he was in court, things headed down a predictably disastrous track. The Daily Beast reports that, after taking the stand, the former President treated it like every other public speaking event he’s ever been involved with and proceeded to project verbal diarrhea onto onlookers. The outlet writes:
Trump veered wildly off-script, insulted New York Attorney General Letitia James, demeaned the judge, whined that the trial was “very unfair,” and insisted that no one with money to lend should ever believe the Trump Organization’s own financial statements. Confronted with conflicting data in documents that seemed to point to inflated values of a New York City property, Trump dissembled before sulking, “This is so crazy.”
The case in question, which was brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, involves accusations that the former President previously exaggerated the value of some of his business and property assets to a fraudulent degree. The judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, found Trump and his sons liable for fraud back in September and canceled the Trump Organization’s business certification—a move that experts say could seriously hamper the billionaire’s business. Engoron’s decision was later delayed by a New York appeals court.
How did Engoron handle Trump’s ranting and raving? By doing something that the former President is admittedly not very used to: telling him to shut up.
“Please, just answer the questions. No speeches,” Engoron was forced to say, at one point, as the former President rambled on.
The judge’s frustrations were also directed at Trump’s lawyers. At one point, the judge reminded the defense team: “This is not a political rally. This is a courtroom,” and, at yet another point, amidst Trump’s outbursts, was forced to say: “I beseech you to control him if you can.” He added: “If you can’t, I will.” At another point, Engoron broke for 15 minutes, reportedly so Trump’s lawyers could talk to him about courtroom etiquette.
Trump’s strategy so far has been to rail against everyone involved in his legal cases—a tactic many commentators have noted is testing the norms of judicial conduct. Whatever the forum—online or actual courtroom—it’s obvious that the MAGA brand is all about sticking to your guns and never admitting you’ve done something wrong.
With so many trials in motion, the full heat of campaign season approaching, and so much shit to be posted, we’re all just watching to see if he can get away with treating a courtroom like his Twitter timeline. The bigger news would probably be that Trump finally learned to STFU.
