After being a fly on the courtroom wall for the first day of Donald Trump’s hush money trial, Rachel Maddow remarked how the former president looks “thinner than I’ve seen him in the past” but “considerably older” and “like a man who is miserable to be here.”
Maddow pulled some strings to be in the Manhattan courtroom where the state of New York is presenting its election interference case, which revolves around hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“Thanks to everybody at NBC who made it possible for me to get into the courtroom,” Maddow said Monday on MSNBC. “I realize it’s a hot ticket and it’s a privilege to cover something this historic.”
Maddow echoed press reports that the dingy, fluorescent-lit courtroom is an odd context in which to see the former president who’s known for luxurious creature comforts.
“I will say just in terms of the vibe in the room, what you have heard about it being kind of a dingy courtroom is real,” Maddow said. “It’s not necessarily important in terms of the way the wheels of justice grind. It is striking to see the former president, somebody who has tried to embody the luxury brand, sitting in a room that essentially feels like a high-ceiling DMV office.”
Maddow recapped some of Monday’s opening arguments, explaining how Trump’s defense brought complex counternarratives to the prosecution’s more straightforward “lining up of the dots.”
“(Defense attorney Todd) Blanche, in fact, advanced a whole counterfactual: ‘You know, those invoices from Michael Cohen were really about legal retainer for his for his legal services, and there was no sexual encounter between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels,’” Maddow continued.
“All of these other sort of counter-narratives that might explain the evidence that again, were not just connecting the dots — that were kind of a baroque, detailed, elaborate story with a lot of emotion attached to it, that the jury was expected, I think, to buy into as much with their heart as with their minds. So a much more cerebral, simple case from the prosecution.”
From where she was sitting, Maddow described Trump’s affect as “inert” and “slump-shouldered,” in addition to “old, tired and mad.” She didn’t see him as “particularly animated,” but more “annoyed, resigned, or angry even.”
“I would say he seems thinner than I’ve seen him in the past,” Maddow said. “He seems considerably older and he seems annoyed, resigned, maybe angry. He seems like a man who is miserable to be here. I’m no body language expert. This is just my observation.”
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