This is one of the least surprising things I've read all week about how Trump is handling things after being forced to sit in court and keep his mouth shut, for the most part anyway, this past week. As MSNBC's Charles Coleman Jr. told a panel on this Saturday's The Weekend:
"Donald Trump is not used to being in spaces where there are narratives advancing about him that he cannot counteract and that is exactly why he has so much trouble with this gag order," he told the hosts.
"There are things being said about him and he feels as if his hands are tied: he cannot stand the feeling," he elaborated. "And I joked about it at the beginning of the last segment. The truth is that trial is a very long, arduous and exhausting process. For someone of his age, it is a lot of stress to deal with. That is why I fully expect, regardless of what happens with Judge Juan Merchan's recent ruling this week, he is going to pop."
Reporting from Rolling Stone this weekend affirmed the notion that Coleman is absolutely correct on Trump being close to exploding in public given the way he's raging in private:
The former president’s anger during the first week of his New York hush money trial was “maxed out, even for him,” a source tells Rolling Stone [...]
Trump hasn’t been taking to martyrdom very well behind the scenes, though, three sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. He has privately raged over everything from reports that he can’t stop dozing off, to how the court sketch artist is rendering him, to late-night talk show hosts joking about his legal troubles. The former president is reaching levels of fury over the judicial process and all it entails that are “maxed out, even for him,” says one source who has had to personally endure Trump’s recent rantings about his trial.
The presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee has a lengthy track record of getting volcanically angry, and often allowing his rage to dictate political, legal, and policy decisions. But with the historic first criminal trial of an American president now underway, his public and private wrath has become particularly multi-faceted, and sustained to the point that longtime confidants have taken notice.
Among the heavily recurring topics in Trump’s private sniping this past week — according to the source, another person familiar with the situation, and a different Trumpworld figure briefed on the matter — is the former president’s bitterness towards New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who reported in print, online, and on CNN that Trump was visibly nodding off while in court. “He appeared to be asleep,” she told the network. “He didn’t pay attention to a note his lawyer passed him. His jaw kept falling on his chest, and his mouth kept going slack.”
I hate to break it to poor old Trump, but Haberman wasn't the only one reporting on him falling asleep in the courtroom.
He already reprimanded him for muttering at a potential juror. We'll find out shortly what happens with the gag order violations.
