So much for Donald Trump’s stunt about delivering his own closing trial argument

| 8:55 pm EST January 10, 2024
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When the news leaked earlier this week that Donald Trump was considering delivering his own closing argument at his New York civil fraud trial, I pointed out that this information had leaked for a reason. Either Trump was leaking this because he wanted headlines about how he was going to turn the trial on its head, or Trump’s people were leaking this because they were trying to stop him from going through with it. Either way, it was unlikely that it was actually going to happen.

Sure enough, Judge Engoron signed off on Trump delivering his own closing argument. But then he asked Trump’s attorneys to affirm that Trump would stick to the rules. When they said they couldn’t get Trump to agree to this, Engoron then ruled that Trump was not allowed to deliver the closing argument.

We’re going to see arguments about how this was Trump’s secret evil genius master plan all along, and how he’s going to use this to get the verdict magically overturned on appeal. But that’s pretty far removed from reality.

What we actually saw here was what we usually see from Trump. He said he was going to deliver his own closing argument, he got a bunch of headlines claiming that this was indeed going to happen, and then he ended up not going through with it. Trump is a bluffer, and this was yet another bluff. If he’d really wanted to deliver his own closing argument, he could have just agreed to Engoron’s rules.

By the way, there’s no way for Trump to use this as the basis for a successful appeal. Judge Engoron gave Trump the chance to deliver his own closing argument, but it was Trump and his attorneys who ultimately pulled the plug by declining to agree to the rules. There’s really no story here beyond Trump threatening to do something and then not doing it, which is always the story with this guy. You never take his threats at face value.