In an article about the Trumps by Marie Brenner for Vanity Fair in September of 1990, Ivana Trump’s attorney, Michael Kennedy, was quoted mentioning that Señor Trumpanzee kept a copy of a book of Hitler’s speeches, My New Order, next to his bed and would pick it up and read it from time to time. Trump is hardly a scholar or historian so… I wonder what he was doing with My New Order. The book, wrote Brenner, revealed Hitler’s “extraordinary ability as a master propagandist… Perhaps his possession of Hitler's speeches merely indicates an interest in Hitler's genius at propaganda. The Führer often described his defeats at Stalingrad and in North Africa as great victories. Trump continues to endow his diminishing world with significance as well. ‘There's nobody that has the cash flow that I have,’ he told the Wall Street Journal long after he knew better. ‘I want to be king of cash.’”
In that same article, Brenner quoted a Trump attorney who said “Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory. If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”
In 1923, when his Munich putsch failed, Hitler was arrested and put on trial. He used the trial as an opportunity to promote his Nazi ideology, criticizing the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles while delivering impassioned speeches that thrilled his supporters. While he was found guilty of treason and sentenced to prison, his charisma and oratory skills at the trial allowed him to gain tons of media attention and support from other nationalist, racist and right-wing groups. His defense team, led by Nazi Hans Frank, has a strategy not solely focused on legal arguments but included as a goal using the trial to promote Naziism. It was the kind of politically charged trial where it wasn’t uncommon for defendants to use the stand to make political speeches.
Hitler's time in at Landsberg Prison, had a significant impact on the Nazi movement, shoring up his followers and helping to attract and inspire new supporters.
Over the weekend, Rolling Stone writers Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng reported that Trump seems to want Judge Engoron to throw him in jail for a night and has been baiting him and daring him to do so. He and his defense team “have settled on a strategy built on spite and unbridled antagonism… [They] are intentionally trying to provoke the judge into a nuclear-level overreaction. Inviting that kind of response could even lead to the judge ordering Trump to be remanded to a jail cell for the night. The judge in the case had already imposed a gag order on Trump, warning him to refrain from attacks on the judge’s staff. Late last week, the order was expanded to also include Trump’s attorneys. Trump has still shown a brazen willingness to violate it repeatedly. And as bizarre as it may sound, there are attorneys and political advisers to Trump who have told the former president that a so-called ‘remand order’ to put him in custody for repeatedly breaching the judge’s rulings might be a good thing— both legally and politically. The ex-president’s legal advisers had long ago told Trump that his chances of winning at trial are close to zero— hence, their scorched-earth, “Fyre Festival”-style courtroom performances. According to the three sources, several Trump attorneys and other key allies have advised him that the more the New York judge supposedly ‘overreacts’— including perhaps remanding Trump— the better their case for an appeal will be.”
In recent weeks, the former president and some of his lawyers in the New York civil fraud trial have discussed the likelihood of Judge Arthur Engoron very aggressively responding to Trump team’s strategy of relentless hostility and defiance. The tactics have included attacks on Engoron’s court clerk, filibustering the prosecution’s witnesses with repetitive questions, and raising legal arguments the judge had already specifically prohibited.
…The legal team has further assured Trump that even if he were remanded, they would likely be able to deploy a variety of legal tactics to keep him from spending any time behind bars. According to two other sources with knowledge of the situation, some Trump advisers have already reached out to certain outside attorneys to see if those lawyers would be interested in joining that potential fight to keep Trump out of jail. (Some of those lawyers have preemptively turned Team Trump down.)
In addition, there have been recent conversations among some of Trump’s 2024 campaign brass of how much of an immediate fundraising boost they would enjoy, if a New York judge were to try to put Trump in a cell for even a minute. “All the cash in the world,” one Trump political adviser says.
In the course of the New York civil trial of Trump and his eponymous real-estate organization, Judge Engoron has been visibly enraged by the behavior of the ex-president and his lawyers in court. This has resulted in a limited gag order following Trump’s derogatory remarks about Engoron’s staff, as well as expensive sanctions on both the legal team and Trump. Engoron has made clear that if Trump continues to flagrantly violate his gag order, the judge may take “severe” action, including possibly remanding Trump to jail. Last week, the judge said he and his office have been flooded with “hundreds” of examples of harassment and threats during this trial.
Trump has been surrounded by lawyers who for years have begged him to show restraint or caution. In this case, he is buttressed by attorneys who appear more than willing to join in his preferred public relations, legal, and political tactics of innuendo and mud-slinging. In just the past few weeks, Trump’s attorneys have variously suggested that his former accountant may have “mental health” issues and accused his former attorney Michael Cohen of perjury.
On Friday, Chris Kise, Trump’s lead attorney in the case, appeared to test the judge’s patience by once again by attacking his court clerk, Allison Greenfield, with claims about her “excessive political donations” from a Wisconsin man who describes himself as “Applying the 69th Amendment to the Internet!” in his Twitter bio.
Kise flagged a Breitbart article which he claimed “raises questions of impartiality” against Trump. The article describes a complaint made by Brock Fredin, who has frequently attacked Engoron and his clerk with crass insults on social media.
Fredin’s attacks had previously helped to land Trump in trouble with Judge Engoron when he posted a screenshot from the man’s Twitter’ account insulting Greenfield on his Truth Social platform. That move earned Trump a gag order and a warning from the judge to steer clear of insulting court staff.
But Kise appears undaunted by Engoron’s warnings that he is “very protective” of his staff. On Thursday, he chastised Greenfield for passing notes to the judge, which prompted Engoron to expand Trump’s gag order to include his attorneys. The next day, Kise pressed ahead with gripes about Greenfield in the Breitbart article and claimed that the “defense will have to give serious consideration to seeking a mistrial” because of them.
While Trump’s attorneys stoke the judge’s ire, it’s unclear how far Engoron would likely go with Trump himself should he continue to ignore the gag order against him. Various lawyers, including some retained by Trump, privately concede that if Trump were an ordinary citizen, he likely would have been remanded by now for his behavior. But Trump is not an ordinary citizen. His position as the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner and leader of the Republican Party would make any decision to impose jail time, even if brief, extremely politically fraught.
This morning Trump was ready to set off for court, one more nasty little slam against the judge who will decide what his punishment will be. Once he got there, he turned the court into a circus, as his testimony "quickly descended into bitter sniping Monday among the judge, Trump’s attorneys and a lawyer for the New York attorney general’s office, as Trump’s discursive answers and outbursts prompted the judge to repeatedly admonish him and threaten to curtail his testimony. During his first three hours on the witness stand, Trump repeatedly lost his temper and attacked the judge, railing against the person who will decide the fate of his business empire. 'It’s a terrible thing you’ve done. You know nothing about me,' Trump said during one verbal strike from the witness stand. 'You believe that political hack back there,' he said, looking toward New York Attorney General Tish James, who brought the $250 million civil fraud case against Trump, his adult sons and officers in the Trump Organization. 'Either people are very stupid, or there’s a fraud,' Trump said, referring to an aspect of a crucial pretrial ruling in which the judge, Justice Arthur Engoron, found that Trump systematically inflated his assets to obtain favorable terms from banks and insurers. As a result of that ruling, the trial is largely about what penalties Trump and his company will face— and because there is no jury, Engoron will decide that issue as well."
Engoron didn't take Trump's bait but at one point he addressed Trump's lawyer and said "I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can. This is not a political rally. This is a courtroom." Later, Goebbels-style, Trump told the media gathered outside the courtroom, Trump called the case "a scam" and said the case should be dismissed.
