Judge Chutkan pretty much just told Donald Trump that it’s all over for him
Judge Chutkan just told Trump that the more he runs his mouth, the more urgency she’ll show in getting the case to trial. As I’ve said, at this point he can’t do anything to help himself. His antics can only serve to make his life much, much worse for him.
Trump’s only “strategy” at this point is to somehow magically delay this trial until after the election – an essentially impossible goal to begin with – and now he’s being told that his antics will only result in an even swifter trial. He now has no strategy whatsoever.
The judge also said she doesn’t care that Trump wants to run for office, and that it won’t be a factor in her decision making.
I know some of you were hoping the judge would wave a magic wand and send Trump through a trap door into a holding cell. But I did try to warn you that it’s not how things work – and not how they would work with any defendant.
Consequences for misbehaving criminal defendants are incremental, but they are absolutely real. Trump just got hit with a protective order and a swift trial timeline. If he wants to run his mouth more, he’ll get hit with more consequences.
The kicker is that Trump can’t even get anywhere by complaining about what the judge just did to him. “The judge said the more I run my mouth the quicker we’ll go to trial, that’s so unfair!” If he’s looking to play victim to his base, that’s not much of a talking point.
Keep in mind that after the judge warned Trump to shut up on the E. Jean Carroll case, he did indeed shut up (until immediately after the trial, at which point he mistakenly thought he could get away with it). So there is precedent for Trump backing down in these situations.
In fact there’s a lot of precedent for Trump backing down under threat. In spite of the media portraying him as always doing whatever he wants and always getting away with it, that’s truly never how he’s operated in the political realm.
Trump has a consistent history of making dire threats he can’t follow through on, knowing the media will condemn him for it in a way that makes him look powerful, only for that threat to be forgotten, and then he makes some new threat he can’t follow through on, cycle repeats.
In reality Trump’s track record reveals him to be consistently tepid, full of bluff and bluster he can’t follow through on, unable to make a decision until it’s too late to help him, and often crippled by paranoid confused fear.
So we’ll see how Trump responds to yesterday’s hearing. On the one hand, if he runs his mouth, he’s burying himself. On the other hand, even if he plays by the rules, he’s still going to prison.
So what will Trump do? People’s behavior can be tricky to predict when they know they’re going to lose no matter what they do. On the one hand he’s clearly self destructive and wants his downfall over with. On the other hand he’s a coward. Either ways going to jail – either after his trial if he behaves, or before his trial if he doesn’t.
