Former President Donald Trump was “a pretty defeated and deflated Donald J. Trump” after the first day of his hush money trial in New York City, MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace said Monday.
After playing a clip of Trump addressing the media in which he complained about Judge Juan Merchan denying his request to attend his son’s graduation, New York Times investigative reporter and MSNBC contributor Susanne Craig agreed, saying that “he’s really angry and he’s realizing that he’s going to now have to sit there every day.”
The journalist further elucidated that Merchan’s threats of being ejected from the courtroom and being arrested and imprisoned made the first day feel particularly “real” for the embattled politician.
Merchan also refused to let Trump attend next week’s Supreme Court hearings about whether or not the one-time real estate mogul is immune from prosecution in a separate trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Craig summed up Trump’s complaints as”petty, grievance-filled griping” as he realized “he is expected to be present for every single day.”
Added Craig, “The judge told him this morning that if he fails to show up, a warrant will be issued for his arrest, which is standard for anybody in this sort of circumstance. And also if he disrupts the proceedings, he could be ejected or go to jail. This is real.”
Wallace, incidentally, presented the footage of Trump outside the courtroom with the caveat, “I promise we’re going to come out of this if he starts lying or threatening people.”
Wallace then asked NBC News political correspondent Vaughn Hillyard, “Has it ever been this real for Donald Trump?”
“I don’t think there’s anything much more real than a criminal trial,” Hillyard replied. “Clearly what Donald Trump here is now looking at is the potential of attacking the judge who can be very well the one who determines what his sentence is.”
“This is the rare arena in which Donald Trump is not in charge of his own fate. He’s not in charge of his schedule. He’s not in charge of when he gets to eat. He’s not in charge of when he gets to go,” Wallace said. “He’s not in charge of when it gets to come. The schedule is set by the judge. The rules are set by the judge, and he is in some ways, like any other criminal defendant in these windows of time.”
Watch the entire “Deadline: White House” segment in the video above.
