Keith Davidson is expected back on stand on Thursday; judge Juan Merchan will hold hearing on further claims Trump violated gag order
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.
