Former President Donald Trump, who is attending his criminal trial in Manhattan where he faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business documents to cover up payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, continues to publicly criticize Judge Juan Merchan, who has issued a gag order against Trump.
(Note: The gag order, aimed at preventing the intimidation of jurors and potential witnesses, does not prohibit Trump from attacking the judge.)
The District Attorney’s office contends that Trump has violated the gag order 10 times and the judge’s decision on the issue is expected today. Jail time for the defendant is a possible outcome, though most legal analysts don’t expect it.
MAGA loyalists are nonetheless using the threat of jail to continue to promote Trump as an innocent victim being wrongfully persecuted by a “weaponized” justice system.
Former House Speaker and zealous Trump supporter Newt Gingrich said yesterday on Fox News: “I am deeply worried that tomorrow a totally corrupt judge and a totally corrupt district attorney are gonna try to put a former President of the United States, candidate of his party and frontrunner in the polls, in jail.”
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Gingrich added: “There has to be some way to reach out to the Supreme Court, this is literally like some of the civil rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s.”
[Note: Trump recently followed the same rhetorical game plan, claiming martyrdom and telling his followers: “I will gladly become a Modern day Nelson Mandela — It will be my GREAT HONOR.”]
Gingrich did not explain his comparison of Trump to civil rights workers in Mississippi in the 1960s, some of whom were murdered by members of the local Ku Klux Klan.
[Note: Three civil rights workers — James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner — were abducted and murdered in Mississippi in June 1964, while working with the Freedom Summer campaign to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote.]
Gingrich also compared Trump’s “corrupt” criminal trial to the film On the Waterfront. He said: “The whole thing, frankly, resembles On the Waterfront, Stanley Kubrick’s film. This is about corruption.”
[Note: Hollywood director — and namer of names for the House Un-American Activities Committee — Elia Kazan directed On the Waterfront.]
The protagonist of On the Waterfront is an up-and-coming boxer (Marlon Brandon) who throws a fight at the behest of a local mob boss who controls the waterfront where the boxer works. When a fellow longshoreman turns up dead, the boxer struggles with the decision to testify against the powerful mob boss.