From mounting temper tantrums to sleepless nights fearing prison, much has been said and speculated about Donald Trump’s demeanor while facing one legal hurdle after the next. But the four-time indicted former president’s niece, Mary Trump, believes that she knows exactly what’s running through her uncle’s head going into a presumed arraignment in Atlanta next week.
“Donald is and always has been a frightened little boy deep down,” she said Wednesday, speaking with MSNBC host Alex Wagner on “Alex Wagner Tonight.” “And I actually believe that when he goes through this process next week or in the coming days — if he does, as he should, as all of them should, because everybody else in his position has to — it might actually start breaking through that there’s nothing he can do to get out of this.”
The author, who’s been an outspoken Trump dissenter, went on to lay out what she expects in Atlanta compared with the former president’s first arraignment in Manhattan back in April.
“We saw this in New York — he wasn’t arrogant, he wasn’t brash, he submitted in a way that was meek,” she said. “And we’re going to see the same thing, but on steroids next week.”
Mary Trump’s comments came following a press conference in which Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said he expects to fingerprint and mug shot the former president, which has not occurred in his previous arraignments.
“Until anyone tells me differently, we are following our normal practices,” Labat said. “And so it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have mug shots ready for you.”
“Probably the worst thing he can feel is humiliation,” Mary Trump said of her uncle. That was a thought that Wagner later built on, saying that the process laid out by Labat “in and of itself is a form of humiliation.”
Being “treated like a common criminal — that very process to me seems like a schismatic moment in Donald Trump’s life,” Wagner said.
“Quite honestly, just the fact that he has to show up on somebody else’s schedule, and he does not have the option of saying, ‘You know what? I don’t want to do this.’ That in itself is humiliating enough,” Mary Trump said. “We are seeing a man who for his entire life has never had the experience of being held accountable for anything, who has never had to submit to anybody, who has always had the system rigged in his favor. At this point now, where for the fourth time he’s going to have to show up and stand up in front of a judge and go through the processing — but this time, he’s actually going to have to go through all of it just like any common criminal defendant.”
Watch the full “Alex Wagner Tonight” interview in the video above.
