Sleep through THIS, Donald Trump!
Donald Trump has slept through much of his criminal trial, and it’s become a big enough of a media story that Trump is angrily pushing back against it. Trump’s own attorneys are reportedly afraid to leave him alone at the defense table or else he’ll quickly doze off.
But on Friday afternoon, while his longtime sidekick Hope Hicks was on the stand spelling out his guilt, Trump wasn’t asleep at all. By all accounts he was paying close attention to what she was saying. That doesn’t mean he necessarily understood what she was saying or why it mattered or where he was. But he clearly knew who she was, and he presumably has strong feelings toward her, so he paid attention.
Of course Trump’s strong feelings toward Hicks are presumably positive, so he behaved. But what happens when someone else takes the stand who evokes just as strong of feelings in Trump, but negative ones?
In other words, what happens when Trump’s former lovers like Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal take the stand? Will he remember that he had to pay these women off? Will he be angry at them? More to the point, what happens when Michael Cohen takes the stand? Trump has spent years publicly seething about how Cohen “betrayed” him.
Once emotionally meaningful witnesses like Cohen do take the stand, Trump will surely pay attention instead of sleeping. And what will Trump do? Will he start muttering things during the testimony? Will his lawyers be able to control him? Will the judge need to throw Trump in a cell while the testimony is playing out?
There are also people on social media who suspect that Trump keeps dozing off during the trial because his handlers are drugging him in order to make sure he behaves. There’s no specific evidence of this. But if Trump is even sleepier during the witnesses he hates most, it would suggest that his handlers are drugging him even more thoroughly to try to prevent him from having confused angry outbursts.
So this will all be worth watching going forward. As bad as it is for Trump that he’s slept through much of his trial so far, it might get even worse for him once we start getting to the witnesses that make him too angry to sleep.
