Pellinore
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- May 30, 2018
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Except that his lawyers aren't the ones with the skill on the mic, he is. The people who care about watching lawyers be lawyers are the policy and judicial wonks who are going to follow it step-by-step anyway. Cameras will get direct quotes and YouTube clips to the half-interested YouTube surfers or whatever, which is most people.Cameras in the courtroom should be the last thing anti-Trumpers would want. They will already have to deal with wall-to-wall Trump coverage. When Trump's lawyers cross-examine the government's witness, or when Trump's lawyers present his case, the last thing you should want is millions of people watching and millions more seeing it on Youtube that evening.
That will work against Trump in two big ways. First, people will see prosecutors speaking and describing the charges in detail, rather than just seeing a tweet about a post somewhere. Second, Trump and a handful of his people will have to answer questions directly in court. Trump's message has done really well in a political arena when he can spin or stretch or simply lie, but in case you haven't noticed, his message does tremendously poorly in court, where everything has to be true.
People seeing that every day all the time could be really bad for him. Two months before the convention it could be devastating, but I think Judge Cannon will push that back further. Jack Smith streamlined the DC court conspiracy and obstruction charges, and the trial date for that will probably be set on the 28th of this very month, and Judge Upadhyaya is a lot less lenient toward Trump. That's likely to get a quick date and cameras just in time for the primaries.
Honestly, I don't see how he intends to navigate this logistically. Forget presidential campaigns, have you ever known anyone in history that had to juggle *six* different high-profile court cases at the same time?