Former President Donald Trump has been called a lot of names in the first six days of his New York hush-money trial.
“We will call him ‘President Trump’ out of respect for the office that he held from 2017 to 2021,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told the jury during his opening statement Monday. “And as everybody knows, it’s the office he’s running for right now. He’s the Republican nominee.”
Longtime tabloid publisher David Pecker, who testified that he conspired with Trump in 2015 and 2016 to “catch and kill” stories that could harm Trump’s election effort, told the court that when they spoke, “I would call him Donald.”
Judge Juan Merchan greeted the former president Tuesday with a standard address for a defendant: “Good morning, Mr. Trump.” That’s also been the form favored by prosecutors.
The what’s-in-a-name question is just one of the unusual aspects of the first criminal trial of a former American president, but it points to tension points for Trump and his defense team.
Blanche has a tough balancing act between the audience of one at the defense table and the audience of 12 in the jury box — and between Trump as the most powerful man in America at one time and as a common defendant now.
Trump, his world-famous shock of orange-blond hair screaming out against the drab palette of a wood-paneled courtroom and the dark sea of trial-attired lawyers and court officers, demands that his employees refer to him as “president.” That is not uncommon for former presidents, whose aides typically use “Mr. President” or “the president” long after their terms expire.
But there are other reasons for Trump’s lawyers to call him that. For one, his broader legal and public-relations strategy for the more consequential federal charges facing him relies on an argument that he should be immune from prosecution for acts undertaken as president. A separate set of his lawyers are scheduled to make that contention before the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday.
And while the New York defense team would surely like for jurors to conclude that Trump was too powerful to be bothered by the details of how an aide was repaid for silencing a porn star, Blanche suggested Monday that he is cognizant of the risk that a jury could be alienated if the defendant seems to think he is above the peers assigned to judge him.
After explaining why he would call Trump “the president” — and reminding jurors that he is now the presumptive Republican nominee for that office — Blanche immediately sought to frame his client as a normal guy.
“But — and this is important — he’s not just our former president. He’s not just Donald Trump that you’ve seen on TV and read about and seen photos of,” Blanche said. “He’s also a man. He’s a husband. He’s a father. And he’s a person, just like you and just like me.”
There’s nothing novel about a defense lawyer humanizing his client; it’s a key component of any competent criminal defense. There can be little doubt Trump also likes that formulation. None of his family members have appeared in court with him, even though he has made frequent use of former first lady Melania Trump and his adult children on the campaign trail for all three of his presidential campaigns.
No matter what the prosecutors or defense lawyers say, it will be a challenge for jurors to look past the fact that they will pass judgment on a former president, a leading candidate for the Oval Office and a politician charged with making phony financial statements to hide an alleged affair so that he could win an election.
Trump may be the most recognizable man on Earth.
And yet the jurors will have to decide whether this Trump, by any other name, would be as guilty or not guilty.
