The last time Donald Trump won the presidency was in 2016, in unnervingly similar circumstances to 2024. He was an insurgent candidate then, who was regarded by voters as a celebrity entertainer and property mogul, not a politician. The scenes inside a Manhattan courtroom, with exotic appearances by Stormy Daniels, the porn star who allegedly received $130,000 in covert hush money from Trump, and fixer Michael Cohen, the “rat” who flipped on his boss, could not have been better designed to recapture that upstart, outsider energy.
The glee felt by Trump’s opponents at the prospect of the former president finally being held to account for his alleged crimes is misplaced. The non-stop attention paid to the case is undercutting Joe Biden’s chief charge that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy and can never again be trusted with the keys to the White House. He doesn’t look very dangerous, stuck in court for days on end.
