On Day One of The Trial, the former president’s hair and skin looked darker. And his mood was dark, too. And, why not? He was facing a tawdry criminal trial in his hometown, New York City, that will drag him and maybe his wife through the mud again in what promises to be a rough-and-tumble court case during the thick of his reelection campaign.

It is a trial that will not only remind voters of his grab-the-lower-region-of-women’s-private parts remarks, but also of his alleged affair with a pornographic movie actress who he allegedly tried to silence with a $130,000 payment in an alleged attempt to protect his 2016 campaign. A conviction on 34 counts of fraudulently altering business records could land him in prison for four years. Who wouldn’t be gloomy? A lot of allegedlys floating around.

Yet, on Day One, he dozed off in court. His head jerked up when he got a note from his defense attorney. He then urged counsel to argue with the judge on a motion. He showed dismay when the judge hesitated granting him a day off to attend his son’s graduation.

On the second day, as jury selection started, he muttered and motioned toward one of the potential jurors, and the judge, who has already gagged him on certain out-of-court statements, harshly rebuked the former president: “I won’t have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom.”

If Trump had stood trial in New York in 1996, cameras would have captured the snoozes, the gestures, the mutterings that the press can only now use words to describe.

New York, you see, has not allowed TV cameras since 1997, one of only two states that forbid video coverage even for the trial of the first president to be criminally prosecuted in 247 years.........

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