Hours before the trial of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts related to paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels is set to commence, the former president is still raging about the unfairness of it all on social media.
And one columnist thinks Trump has good reason to worry.
What is likely is keeping Trump up at night is not so much what his former lawyer Michael Cohen will say because it has already been litigated when he was put on trial and convicted for lying to Congress.
This time, the wild card is what Stormy Daniels will reveal about her private moments with the former president that could end up embarrassing Trump and disgusting a Manhattan jury already expected to be hostile to him.
According to Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte, Trump's multiple attempts to derail and delay the trial for over a year is a sign of his "abject terror" about what will transpire once Daniels is sworn in.
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As the analyst explained on Monday morning, Trump lost in two trials when writer E. Jean Carroll described her interactions with him that led to a jury finding him liable for sexually abusing her. That, in turn, led to nearly $100 million in civil judgments from sympathetic jurors.
In the so-called "hush money" case, Trump faces jail time if convicted on just one of the charges against him.
As Marcotte wrote, "I suspect there's another underrated source of Trump's fear and rage: He knows Daniels will be taking the stand. Hers is a story that is likely to make him look bad, well beyond garden-variety adultery. The fact that he was an adulterer was probably the best-known aspect of his life going into the election."
Marcotte then added that Trump's "predatory sexual behavior cannot be explained away by yelling 'deep state' or claiming he was 'just joking' or insisting that 'all politicians do it.'"
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Writing that the "stakes are lower" for Daniels than they were for Carroll, because she has never painted herself as a victim, Marcotte suggested, "She has been through hell, and now she'll get an opportunity to tell her side of the story, in a situation where everyone else has to shut up and listen. From what I've seen of her, she is plenty capable of rising to the challenge. Trump tells lies all day every day, especially about the women he has mistreated and abused. When one of them gets to look him in the eye and tell the truth, that's a rare moment. And I suspect it will be a powerful one."
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