Donald Trump’s senility is now looming large in his New York fraud trial
At one point on Friday, attorney Chris Kise was in court spewing Breitbart conspiracy theories about Judge Engoron’s clerk. Even as this scene was playing out, attorney Alina Habba was outside the courtroom, whining about how unfair the trial was.
It doesn’t matter that one of these attorneys used to know how to function in a courtroom, and that the other seemingly got the gig on the basis of having an office located down the road from Bedminster. They’re now both playing the fool, to put it politely. And they have to know that they’re not helping their client any with these sad antics. But that’s not their goal anyway, is it?
The reality is there’s nothing that Donald Trump can do to win this trial. He already lost the trial by summary judgment before it began. And even if he hadn’t, based on the evidence and testimony on display so far, there would still be very little doubt about the verdict. No attorney – not even the best on the planet – could help Trump in this trial. There’s really nothing for his attorneys to do, other than to keep Trump happy so that he doesn’t fire them as he’s losing. And this brings us to how one goes about keeping Trump happy these days.
Donald Trump is a confused man who has very little understanding of what’s going on around him these days because his cognitive abilities can’t process most of it. We see it every time he appears in public and utterly fails to read what’s on the screen in front of him. It’s embarrassing. If he weren’t an evil villain, you’d feel sad for him. His ability to understand his trials is no better than his ability to understand what’s on his teleprompter, which is to say basically zero. Now imagine being Trump’s attorney.
We’re talking about a client who has always been viciously sociopathic, who’s facing a series of trials that will strip him of his wealth and put him in prison for the rest of his life, he’s lost half his marbles to dementia, he’s agitated by his worsening inability to understand what’s going on around him, and he’s become highly prone to the kinds of whacked out conspiracy theories that were specifically designed to target right wing losers who are struggling with their mental faculties. How does an attorney possibly go about representing this guy on his way down, and not get fired by him? Well, you’re seeing it.
Trump now thinks that the Breitbart conspiracy theories – the ones he and his buddies used to strategically help craft for political gain – are real. Okay, so now his attorney is hyping those conspiracy theories in the courtroom during the trial. That’s a good way to piss off the judge and potentially end up with even greater financial penalties. But what’s the difference? This trial is going to bankrupt Trump anyway. Might as well keep him happy in the meantime by playing into his delusions.
Trump is too far gone cognitively to understand or remember that his oldest kids are knee deep in his company’s fraudulent business practices? He’s so deep into dementia that he now thinks of his oldest kids as being young children? Okay, so now his attorney is playing into that by referring to them as “children,” as if they were nine year olds whose innocence is being taken away from them by being forced to testify.
So now Trump’s entire “defense” strategy in this New York civil fraud trial consists of his attorneys playing into his cognitively impaired fantasy world and nothing more – and he’s going to lose horribly. The kicker is that there’s every reason to expect things to go exactly the same way in his criminal trials – and he’ll lose those trials accordingly as well.
Donald Trump is a horrifying ghoul who has deserved to take a hard fall for a very long time. And now that it’s happening, the outcome is being made far worse for him because his mind is failing him. At this point Trump’s status as a senile conspiracy theorist is already weighing heavily on how this trial is progressing, and that’s all before Trump takes the stand next week.
