Donald Trump, gag hoarder
When Donald Trump was hit with a gag order on Tuesday in his New York civil fraud case, it wasn’t the first time Trump has been hit with such restrictions. On the first morning of Trump’s civil rape trial, he made an inappropriate social media post about E. Jean Carroll, prompting the judge to threaten severe punishment (translation: jail) if he did it again. Trump then sheepishly abided by this throughout the end of the trial.
So it won’t be a surprise if Trump ends up once again cowering and abiding by this latest gag order. He’s always had a tendency to cower in the face of anyone who’s more powerful than he is. But this is far from the only gag order he’s going to face – and the others are going to be harder for him to live with.
We’re now twelve days from Judge Tanya Chutkan’s hearing to decide whether to impose a broader gag order against Trump. Jack Smith has already built a strong case for the gag order, and Trump’s ongoing antics only serve to increase the odds of it being granted.
At the rate Trump is going, he’s going to keep racking up gag orders. He has four criminal trials and several civil trials pending, and he’s likely to end up facing various limitations in all of them. It’ll be up to Trump to decide whether he can operate within the increasingly tight constraints placed on him.
But one thing is clear: there’s no possible way for Trump to win this. Either he behaves himself and then goes into trial and loses and goes to jail, or he misbehaves and gets himself tossed in jail before trial. Trump can’t misbehave his way into coming out ahead. In the criminal justice system, that’s simply not a thing.
