Donald Trump Doesn’t Like That His Kids Have to Testify in His New York Trial

This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a new feature where we pull a particularly wild statement from the news as a reminder of just how extremely normal everything has become.

“Leave my children alone, Engoron.” —Donald Trump, Nov. 1

The post, fired out on Truth Social at 2:30 on Wednesday morning, was the start of a rant that the former president continued into the day. Judge Arthur Engoron, the target of Trump’s rage, is presiding over the trial brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James; in a $250 million lawsuit, the city is claiming that the Trump Organization for years intentionally inflated Trump’s net worth in order to get favorable loan terms, defrauding banks out of millions of dollars in interest. The judge has already ruled that Trump committed fraud, but a trial still needs to determine fault, as well as the penalties the defendants could face.

Unlike the federal prosecutions of Donald Trump, this civil trial in New York involves several of the former president’s children: Don Jr. and Eric are defendants. Ivanka is not a defendant but will testify. It was this that set Trump on his Truth Social spree. On Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump Jr. testified that he was not involved in the preparation of his father’s financial statements at any time (even after his father became president and he became appointed trustee of his father’s irrevocable trust); he is expected to take the stand again later in the week.

There’s something striking about the declaration in Trump’s Truth Social post: The fantasy-sci-fi quality of Engoron’s name, mixed with the paternal protectiveness of a man who seems to think of his youngest daughter as an afterthought and his two lib-owning, gun-worshiping adult troll sons as little more than personal extensions, brings a surreal and novelistic quality to it all. Add on Trump’s other posts’ description of the trial as “an excursion into the wilderness” and his complaint that Engoron was “crazy, totally unhinged, and dangerous,” that “this is his big chance, and he was not going to let it go,” and it seems Trump is really setting a scene out of Lord of the Rings. One pictures a heroic Donald, staring down the Big Bad, one adult son cowering behind him, the other in Engoron’s evil grip, as the wind whips and whistles around them.

That’s not to say the paternal anger isn’t real. According to the Washington Post, Trump has been particularly outraged by the New York trial because it strikes at the Trump brand—but also because it involves his children. He has appeared at court several times, despite not being required to show up there, because the brand and his childrens’ inheritance are both at stake, the Post reported. It’s enough to make any man bully a law clerk and twice violate a gag order set by the judge. As Trump wrote in the same Truth Social post where he told the judge to leave his kids alone: “There is no Victim (except me!).”