The Manhattan courthouse scene left Trump feeling isolated and unsupported. He got some backup from old friends and acquaintances — but it wasn’t clear they were there just for him.
Donald Trump complained last week that the courtroom and the surrounding area outside of 60 Centre Street was so locked down — like a “buttoned up vest” — that his supporters couldn’t show up to protest.
So this week, Trump got some backup. A series of former and current advisers and friends arrived at the courthouse to serve as a kind of security blanket, providing some small measure of moral support to a man accustomed to being surrounded by a coterie of advisers, admirers and flatterers.
After three weeks of being regularly encircled by court personnel, lawyers, strangers and the media, forced to hear testimony about his alleged misdeeds in court day after day, the cavalry heeded the former president’s call.
He not only looks angry and alone in the courtroom, his public remarks betray the sense he feels that way. Reports suggest Trump has taken to bad mouthing his lead lawyer Todd Blanche in closed door phone calls, as he grows frustrated that Blanche won’t follow his lead. In a gag order hearing on Thursday, after Blanche agreed with Judge Juan Merchan that no one forced Trump to attack Michael Cohen online, Trump reportedly looked over at Blanche and shook his head.
Yet Trump’s friends aren’t always the most reliable, or the most loyal. Whether they’re there to support a friend in need, or for more transactional purposes, it’s sometimes hard to tell.
Remember Carter Page, the Trump campaign adviser from 2016 who was wiretapped by the FBI in 2016 due to his ties to the Russian government? He unexpectedly showed up on Tuesday. So did David McIntosh, the president of the anti-tax Club for Growth, the group that feuded with Trump and sought to defeat him in the early 2024 primary states before both sides made peace. Another supporter in attendance was Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose own legal entanglements and political stylings overlap considerably with Trump. He made sure his whereabouts were well-publicized, posting on X, “With President Trump in NYC to sit through this sham of a trial. This trial is a travesty of justice. I stand with Trump.”
Some family members and close associates — most notably Trump campaign senior adviser Susie Wiles and Trump’s son Eric — were spotted in the room Tuesday. Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn — who was just indicted in Arizona over attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 election — has been in the courtroom multiple days, sitting behind Trump and conferring with Trump’s lawyers. (Epshteyn was also in court multiple days last week.) Trump aides Dan Scavino and Jason Miller also showed up to support the boss.
Earlier today, Hope Hicks, one of Trump’s former closest confidantes, testified that the Trump organization was “run like a small family business in a certain way … People reported to the core family members.”
Still, for a family business, there is an unusual degree of self-preservation and cold calculus.
Today, Hicks broke down crying on the witness stand after questioning from the prosecution, in which she detailed how Trump explained the $130,000 that Cohen had paid to Stormy Daniels.
“Mr. Trump was saying he had spoken to Michael and that Michael had paid this woman to protect him from a false allegation … And he did it out of the kindness of his own heart and he never told anybody about it.”
But according to Hicks, that didn’t sound like Cohen.
“I didn’t know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person,“ she said, describing him instead as “the kind of person who seeks credit.”
Here was one former Trump aide cutting down another as self-interested and bad at his job. We’re likely to hear similar testimony as the prosecution continues to call witnesses next week.
Hicks’ description of Cohen is materially relevant to the trial, but it’s also a clear reminder of the motivations of the denizens of Trumpworld. Like Cohen back in 2016, the aides and friends who showed up this week weren’t necessarily doing so out of the kindness of their heart.
They’re all drawn to Trump like moths to a light. And when his mood goes dark, the spotlight of the trial will do.
