Former Sen. Claire McCaskill Exposes Trump’s New Court Whine For What It Really Is
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Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Monday busted Donald Trump’s claim in a recent fundraising email that he’s being “forced off the campaign trail and into courtrooms” this week.
It’s true that Trump will be the subject of two developments in court, as oral arguments start Tuesday when his attorneys will argue presidential immunity in his election interference case and final arguments begin Thursday in his civil fraud trial in New York.
But McCaskill, in her role as an analyst on MSNBC, pointed out that Trump is “attending these events not because he needs to, not because he has to, not because it’s in his legal best interests, but because he wants the coverage this week, leading up to Iowa, to be all about his narrative that he is a victim of government weaponization against him, that ‘they’re trying to keep me out of office, they’re trying to keep me from fighting for you.’”
Trump is “looking at the Iowa caucuses as his moment to definitively become the nominee,” she said.
“We’re going to talk more about these events if he’s there, and he knows that,” McCaskill continued. “This is all political strategy on his point ― it has nothing to do with his legal peril. It has everything to do with him wanting to become president. Because you know what? These arguments he’s making in front of these federal judges, if he’s president, it all goes away. He waves a wand and there’s no more federal prosecution against him, no more convictions against him, nothing.”
Trump views the courtroom appearances as “essential campaign stops,” McCaskill said.
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin had previously agreed with those points.
“They’re not obligations,” Rubin told “Deadline: White House” guest host Ali Velshi. “In fact, in none of these circumstances does former President Trump have to attend at all ― and to the extent that he and his proxies are characterizing these as requirements or obligations, folks like you and I should push back.”
Trump will attend the immunity claim appeal “solely as a spectator” and will have “no formal role” there, Rubin said.
In the civil trial, Trump “has no role there” either, she added.
“It is a series of arguments or presentations that will be made to Judge Arthur Engoron ― that was a nonjury trial,” she explained. “Presumably, when it’s over or on breaks, we can expect the former president to do what he’s done all along in that case, which is to face the cameras in the courtroom hallway and turn that into somewhere between a runway and ongoing fundraiser as it goes along.”
