The Guardian’s David Smith was on the campaign trail with Trump and reports the former president ran through his familiar litany of falsehoods and complaints.
David has this dispatch:
At a remote rural airport in Michigan, an outsized plane touched down as music from Tom Cruise’s film Top Gun boomed from loudspeakers. Late afternoon sunshine gleamed off five giant golden letters on the plane’s side – “TRUMP” – and its Rolls Royce engines. A crowd bedecked in red roared as the plane rolled to a standstill behind a blue “TRUMP” lectern.
A door opened and men in dark glasses and dark suits from what Donald Trump would call “central casting” made their way down the stairs. “Trump! Trump!” the audience chanted, raising hundreds of camera phones in eager anticipation. Great Balls of Fire, Macho Man and YMCA blared. Finally, the former and would-be future president emerged, clapping and fist pumping to the sound of whoops and cheers and Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA.
How different the warm embrace from Trump’s recent experience as a defendant on criminal trial in a chilly, dingy courtroom in New York. On those days, threatened with prison, he looks old, vulnerable and small. Back on the election campaign trail, it is all about hypermasculine energy and bigness – big plane, big crowds, big promises and big lies.
During his brief break from court, Trump returned to the campaign trail on Wednesday – and used a campaign stop to repeat his attacks on the trial judge as “crooked”.
The AP writes:
Trump’s remarks at events in the battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan were being closely watched after he received a $9,000 fine for making public statements about people connected to the criminal case.
“There is no crime. I have a crooked judge. He’s a totally conflicted judge,” Trump claimed as he spoke to supporters at an event in Waukesha, Wisconsin, claiming again that this and other cases against him are led by the White House to undermine his campaign.
Later at a rally in Freeland, Michigan, he said he was being forced to spend days in a “kangaroo court room”, and claimed without evidence the district attorney was taking orders from the Biden administration.
Hugo Lowell
Donald Trump was confronted with the details of how the former lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor, secured the $130,000 in hush money at the heart of his criminal trial in New York, after being found to be in criminal contempt of a gag order prohibiting attacks on witnesses.
The direct examination of the lawyer, Keith Davidson, is expected to continue on Thursday when the trial resumes. Here are the key takeaways from day nine of People of the State of New York vs Donald J Trump:
Trump trial to hear further testimony from Stormy Daniels lawyer Keith Davidson
Donald Trump’s hush-money trial will pick up again today after the trial took a break on Wednesday – and jurors are due to hear again from the lawyer who negotiated deals on behalf of two women alleged to have had affairs with the former US president.
Keith Davidson has already given colorful testimony about how deals to pay Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels came together in 2016. Prosecutors are using his testimony to help jurors understand the mechanics of Trump’s efforts to pay off women and convince jurors that it was done in service of his campaign.
The judge in the case, Juan Merchan, will also hold a hearing on four more instances where Trump is alleged to have violated the gag order that bars him from attacking a number of people linked to the trial. Merchan has already fined Trump $9,000 for nine violations of the order.
Here’s a quick recap of what happened in court on Tuesday:
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Davidson testified that he began representing McDougal in 2016 “to provide advice and counsel … regarding a personal interaction that she had” with Trump. Davidson reached out to Dylan Howard, the editor of the National Enquirer, promising a “blockbuster Trump story”. Howard replied by text message: “I will get you more than ANYONE for it. You know why.”
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Davidson was questioned by prosecutors about texts in which he was asked whether Trump had cheated on his wife. In those texts, Howard asked Davidson: “Did he cheat on Melania?” “‘I really cannot say yet, sorry,’” Davidson said, reading his text to Howard aloud.
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Davidson testified that the leak of Trump’s Access Hollywood tape had “tremendous influence” on the interest in Stormy Daniels’s story. He said that Daniels’s agent, Gina Rodriguez, had reached a deal with Howard for the tabloid to acquire the rights to her story for $120,000, but Howard backed out of the deal.
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Howard told Rodriguez to call Cohen and complete the deal directly with him, but she refused to negotiate with him following a previous interaction after which she described Cohen as a “jerk” and “very, very aggressive”. Rodriguez asked Davidson to step in and negotiate the deal with Cohen, he testified.
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Davidson said he used a pair of pseudonyms: Stormy Daniels became Peggy Peterson; Donald Trump became David Dennison.
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Davidson testified that the payment to Daniels did not come even after both parties had reached a deal. Cohen made a series of excuses for the delay, Davidson said, noting that he “thought he was trying to kick the can down the round until after the election”.
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Davidson was asked if Cohen ever told him whom he was representing in the Daniels negotiations. He said the implication was clear and that Cohen “leaned on his close affiliation with Donald Trump … He let me know it at every opportunity he could that he was working for Donald Trump.”
Court is expected to resume at 9.30am ET. We’ll bring you the latest updates from the Manhattan courthouse as we get them.
