NY lies haunt 'narcissist' Trump as jurors gear up for criminal trial

The jurors you have to worry about are the ones who are sort of Trojan horse jurors. They’re the ones who are hiding bias. Those are the ones you have to worry about that they’re so motivated by their dislike for Trump that they’re willing to lie on the stand. That’s one legal analyst there discussing possible things Trump and others might be worried about. That was on Fox News. We’re joined by a very special panel, former RNC chair and MSNBC host Michael Steele, Reverend Al Sharpton, host of MSNBC Politics Nation and a former assistant District Attorney for the Manhattan DA’s office. Catherine Christian, welcome to each of you. Nice to see you all. It’s good. See you, man. It’s a good, good panel. Substantively, just a raid here. I want to start with you on the legalities. Plenty of people say, gosh, that anchor and what they’re doing over there is misleading, etcetera. But real quick on that before we get to the defendant. They can talk like that about most of the trial, right? They can talk about it. They can. They have no gag order. Only Donald Trump is the one who can’t speak about that. Yeah. And so while we could do media criticism, Al Sharpton’s been known to give his views to some of the people over there. Before we do that, I just want to establish that legally, there’s not an issue for them, even when it’s misleading. And we might criticize it. Correct. But this defendant seems to think if he can quote it or associate it with them, that somehow he’s not bound by the gag order. Tell us about that and how that’s going to fly, given that you’ve been in this very courtroom. I think he has. Donald Trump has violated the gag order. I think the prosecutor today, Chris Conroy, said multiple times, is getting ridiculous. And I quite frankly, don’t understand why Judge Michonne hasn’t had a minimum. Admonished him or reminded him, Sir, you’d realize there’s a gag order to put off the hearing on whether or not he’s violated to next week. I don’t understand why this it because that gives Donald Trump the whole weekend to say, I guess I can keep doing this because the judge didn’t say anything. You’re saying in the lack of a hearing that draws the line. The defendant sees that as a chance to misbehave more or even an admonishment. We’re going to have a hearing next week, Mr. Trump. But right now, I’m telling you, we have a gag order. Don’t violate. That hasn’t even happened. Yeah. So then I take it to Al Sharpton, you know, your way around New York, the particular media environment and how Donald Trump has navigated this. He’s not being completely reckless or what his supporters would call brave, By which I mean, he’s not just sounding off. He keeps testing, right. He used the Fox thing to try to say, well, I’m just sharing what’s out there. What do you think of his tactics and how do you think this will play out in New York Arena? You know, well, I think that he’s being very strategic, which Donald Trump is always strategic in terms of himself. I think he’s testing it. You used the right word, Eric, to see how far he can go because he’s trying to poke the judge in hopes of if he has to have an appeal, he can make the judge overreact. So he wants to poke him, hoping that the judge will overreact and come down heavy on him heavier than what should be done. So that’s part of the appeal. He’s always got some something up his sleeve. He wants to provoke something. He’s going to use Fox News as the backboard for him to score with the bass. That’s his. That’s his game play. And I think that we’ll see if the judge is not going to be baited. But the judge needs, they’re not dated. He needs to, to stay, enforce the law. It’s funny, the other thing the judge is doing that he’s better be careful of is if he lets Trump go as far as he’s going, how do you come down on somebody else later and say we gave you a gag order, They can use the Trump rule and say, wait a minute, it’s a new president. It’s funny you mentioned that kind of basketball shot because I’m not a big sports guy, but I think that’s called a bank shot and he’s had a lot of trouble getting banks to pay his other legal. So that’s maybe the only kind of bank he knows how to work with. The only kind of bank he’s ever been accused of working with is scheming and trying to get somebody over. He does. He certainly has never been accused of paying his debts or taking care of his bank loans. So Michael Steele, I want to bring you in and play something we excerpted from his remarks today. This is something that does not contain a blatant lie or a violation the gag order. But in the spirit of covering this case, we picked this part, one, because it’s his efforts to defend himself, which he may do, and two, because it does seem a little desperate even for him. He kind of came out of court with a large stack of papers and you might say, does he have the evidence? He’s been reading through this stuff, you know, courts full of paper, evidence, paper. But what it is was would appear to be just printouts that his aides made for him of right wing and other sites just criticizing and doing opinion. And I thought this juxtaposition was interesting, Michael, because that can work sometimes on the campaign trail or in a Republican primary. That’s not how this case is going to be resolved inside that courtroom. Take a look. These are all stories. This is over the last few days from legal experts. This is Wall Street Journal editorial. But all of these are stories from legal experts saying how this is not a case. The case is ridiculous. This is another one. The case is a ridiculous Trump indictment. Take a look at all of these are our stories. You see them here, well, that’s Trump. You know, every, every corner that he’s standing on is a stage. And he will use props. He will use whatever tool is available to him to create a narrative that he thinks best, A positions him and and B allows him to get away with stuff that other people ordinarily wouldn’t get away with. I I think this Rev. You know this to be true about Trump, he will always do the thing he wants to do until someone stops him and he doesn’t believe anyone can stop him. And to this point, he’s been right in large measure. He’s gotten away with pretty much everything he’s attempted to do. He wanted to slow down the trials. Guess what? He slowed down the trials. So now he’s got this platform in which he’s out here with a stack of papers. We don’t know what’s in those papers, but he, you know, he’s just telling us what they say and what they are. And that establishes the ongoing narrative, placing him as a victim and that everyone who believes he’s a victim thinks that this trial is wrong or is illegal or is improper. All of that. And that feeds the beast out on the street. And that’s ultimately the court of public opinion that he’s more interested in than the public opinion, if you will, of a jury or the judge. And I think that that he is playing to that crowd that he wants to keep loyal and hoping that this jury somehow would be mesmerized by just his presence because he’s that much of a narcissist. And but that’s why he also knows, like in New York we used to fight. I marched on him and all that. He doesn’t like people that to fight back because like when when he’s saying the judge won’t even let me go to my Sonny’s graduation and I would have says is that the kid that your wife was having when you were going out with the porn star? I mean is that kid now 18? It would totally rattle him. He likes to go where he’s the only one throwing stuff. He can’t take a punch back.