Trump Visibly Angry About Rules Judge Gave Him As Trial Begins

Donald Trump became visibly annoyed during his trial on Monday as Judge Juan Merchan listed out a set of rules that would come into play if Trump himself decides to testify at the trial. This happened slightly before opening arguments and the REAL beginning of the trial, and it could mean that Trump's desire to testify on his own behalf has been diminished to a degree. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses these new rules along with Trump's reaction to them.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

On Monday, we had the first real day of Donald Trump's criminal trial. All of last week, of course, was jury selection, but we really got into the meat of it on Monday with opening statements. But before the opening statements even began, judge Juan Rashan held what's called a Sandoval hearing, where he let Donald Trump know what would happen if he decides to take the stand, and of course, gets cross examined by the prosecutors. Now, Donald Trump has hinted repeatedly that he totally wants to take the stand and defend himself at that trial. And pretty much all legal experts agree that that would be the worst thing in the world for him to do. And if everybody tells him not to do it, he's more likely to do it. So this is going to be a disaster for him. But the judge read off a series of things that would happen.

And of course, throughout the whole thing, Donald Trump was reportedly shaking his head, not happy at all with what the judge was telling him would happen. So here's the way it went down. Uh, this from Raw story, the judge ruled that an excess Hollywood tape in which Trump brags about sexually assaulting women was fair play for the prosecution. Marshan also allowed Trump's gag order violations and the ruling against him in a civil fraud case to come into play. The judge went on to say Trump could be confronted with two defamation cases brought by writer Eugene Carroll. Uh, two juries found him liable for the defamation, of course. And all of, basically what the judge is saying is like, listen, you wanna take this stat? I'm not gonna stop you, but I'm also not gonna stop these guys over here from bringing up all of the horrible things that you have done because now the judge didn't go into this.

But I will explain that because, because what we're doing, if we're the prosecutors here, is establishing a pattern of behavior. We're establishing by bringing up the fraud trial, that this is a guy that easily cooks the books. He has been found liable for cooking the books. So it's likely if he did it in one instance, he would totally do it with the hush money payment. And then of course, whether or not he wanted to keep somebody quiet because of his horrible actions. Well, we already know he engages in this kind of horrible behavior because two defamation juries have also found him liable for that. So, not to mention, of course, the Access Hollywood tape, he is definitely a womanizer. All of that seemingly irrelevant information is actually super relevant to this case. It may not be the exact same thing, but what the prosecutors are going to do with the jury by telling them stories they obviously already know, is they're going to establish that pattern of behavior. This is a guy that cheats on his spouse. So that part of the story with him, and

Stormy Daniels a hundred percent believable. This is a guy that has no respect for women. So paying off a woman to just keep quiet, obviously something he would do, he has no problem committing fraud. So lying about what the payment was for totally something he would do. He has no respect for women. So thinking he can buy them off, definitely something he would do. And through the fraud trial, we also saw that he will do whatever it takes to get ahead. So again, paying somebody to stay quiet so he could win an election definitely fits within that pattern of behavior. So I'm glad the judge made the decision to allow these things to happen in Cross-examination.