There was nowhere for him to go and nothing he could say; he was trapped.

[Bundbuster]

A silent Trump glowers and stares during third day of criminal trial. This was not Donald Trump the business mogul or Donald Trump the 45th president – it was Donald Trump the defendant

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/18/trump-third-day-jury-selection-criminal-trial

With Donald Trump just a few feet away, a potential juror in the criminal case against him summed up the experience in just three words. “This is bizarre,” she said, with just a slight hint of a seasoned New York accent.

Bizarre it was. There was a potential juror who once spent the night at one of Trump’s lawyers’ homes more than a decade ago (Trump’s team used one of its peremptory strikes to remove the juror). The microphones didn’t work. The proceedings had to start over when Judge Juan Merchan realized that a court reporter hadn’t been present first thing. And the temperature in the courthouse was so frigid that Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, asked Merchan if it would be possible to turn up the temperature “just one degree”.

Trump was far from the comforts of the White House and Mar-a-Lago as he sat in the courtroom at 100 Centre Street. There was nowhere for him to go and nothing he could say; he was trapped. It was a stark reminder of the long slog Trump faces over the next two months or so as he faces 34 felony charges for falsifying business records.

When potential jurors, sitting just feet away, offered critical assessments of him and his presidency, the former president, who is known for his inability to let even the slightest insult go unanswered, sat in silence. As his lawyer Susan Necheles read old social media posts from a potential juror that were highly critical of Trump, he sat silently.