Mr. Gag Order was at it again over the weekend. At a private luncheon Saturday night at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump said Joe Biden was running "a Gestapo administration." He called Jack Smith a “fucking asshole” (that was Saturday; then he called for Smith’s arrest on Sunday) and Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis “a real beauty.”
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He lied and lied about the 2020 election. He "bragged about his golf game extensively, citing tournaments at his own clubs that he ostensibly won," according to The Washington Post's account. And, true to the grifter spirit so central to Trump, he challenged the crowd, who'd paid at least $40,000 a head to attend, to fork over $1 million on the spot for a chance to share the stage with him. Two did. One told the crowd, "Donald J. Trump is the person that God has chosen."
God has also chosen Trump to spend another week (and then some) in that chilly Manhattan courtroom where 12 of his peers will continue to weigh evidence in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case. The consensus is that last week was bad for Trump's defense, what with Hope Hicks's tears and, more importantly, her testimony that Trump knew about attorney Michael Cohen's payment to Daniels. Writing at CNN, legal analyst Norm Eisen, who was in the courtroom, called it a "devastating blow" and wrote that "the jury ate her words up."
That was some high drama, but there's plenty more to come. Daniels is on the prosecution witness list, as is former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Trump, as usual, denies having sex with them. Since it's pretty obvious who's telling the truth here and who's lying, it would seem that these two women can do tremendous damage to his, uh, credibility. They'll need to be assertive under prosecutors' questioning and remain poised under cross-examination.
But probably the highest drama of all, at least with respect to determining how the jury decides the case, will come when Cohen takes the stand. The prosecution is being tight-lipped about who is going to testify when, but this should all be happening soon.
Cohen is the witness best positioned to tell the jury definitively that yes, he made the payment at Trump's direction and that it was clear that the payment was made to preserve Trump's chances to win the election. When he takes the stand, he'll be doing so from a starting point of pretty low credibility. He's a confessed and convicted liar who served prison time. He hasn't really helped his cause lately by tweeting about Donald “VonShitzInPantz,” funny as it may be. (Cohen said last week he'll stop that.)