One of the many quirks of Donald Trump’s pre-presidential life is the plethora of rap songs that reference his image of largess and power — and in some cases the injustice on which such an image was built. Now the only approving reference he can expect from a rapper comes from “Shawn DVS 7.0”, a “Christian conservative rapper” who was among the 50 or so supporters outside the Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday for the start of jury selection in the first of Trump’s four criminal trials. The supporters held signs bearing slogans such as “The Purge Begins, Tuesday November 5”.
“I thought more people would be here,” said one woman who only identified herself as Sophia to Daily Beast.
Joining Shawn and Sophia was a crowd including far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and former Trump attorney and ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s son Andrew. They were easily outnumbered by the reporters and police in attendance, resulting in a typically Trumpian mixture of farce and menace.
Sleepy Don
The stakes may be high for Trump, but apparently not enough for the defendant to keep awake. According to the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, Trump “appeared to nod off a few times”, his mouth “going slack and his head drooping onto his chest”.
This was the NYT’s Susanne Craig, who also said she saw telltale signs of snooziness, telling MSNBC: “He looked like he was nodding off and at one point in a pretty true tell that he was falling asleep, his head nodded down and then he sort of jolted back up at one point.”
“This is 100% Fake News coming from ‘journalists’ who weren’t even in the court room,” a Trump campaign spokesperson insisted in response.
Juror selection devolves into roast
When Judge Juan Merchan asked the first batch of prospective jurors if anyone felt incapable of being fair and impartial regarding Trump, more than 50 (in a group of 96) raised their hands. Indeed the debate around juror selection must have been a special torment for the famously skin-thinned former president. Prospective jurors had their social media activity scoured for bias, and found a lot of humour at Trump’s expense.
A photo of Trump and Barack Obama shared by a jury candidate’s husband around 2016 — captioned “I don’t think this is what they meant by Orange is the New Black” — wasn’t deemed evidence of unacceptable bias. Nor was another juror’s 2018 joke about how the junior football team recently rescued from Thailand’s Tham Luang Nang Non caves had requested they be returned to the cave upon being invited to the Trump White House.
However, a prospective juror was dismissed who admitted they laughed at a video they’d shared a fortnight earlier depicting an AI version of Trump saying “I’m dumb as fuck”. Trump lawyer Todd Blanche complained this was a cohort who had described themselves as relatively neutral about Trump, which tells you something about the kind of passions he inspires. “Trump doesn’t look amused,” Lawfare’s Tyler McBrien posted from inside the courtroom.
Juror ‘intimidation’
So unamused, it turns out, that he had to be warned about “muttering” and “gesturing” at one juror in an apparent attempt to intimidate her. Judge Merchan took Blanche and Trump aside to say he saw Trump was “audibly” saying something in the direction of the juror while she was “12 feet away”.
“I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make this crystal clear,” Merchan said.
