Former President Donald Trump is about to face a "truly leveled" playing field as his first criminal trial kicks off in a matter of days, MSNBC host and legal expert Katie Phang argued on Friday.
The first of the four criminal cases currently leveled against Trump is set to go to trial on Monday, April 15, in New York City. Resulting from an investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the case has charged Trump with illegally falsifying business records in order to hide hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign, in exchange for her not speaking out about an affair the two allegedly had in 2006.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and denied that the affair with Daniels ever happened. Several last-ditch efforts by the former president and his legal team to try and delay the trial start date in recent days have also proven unsuccessful.
During a Friday appearance on her fellow MSNBC host Joy Reid's program The ReidOut, Phang laid out why the start of Monday's trial will put Trump on the same level as any other citizen undergoing a criminal trial.
"He doesn't get the benefit of [the title] 'President Trump,'" Phang said. "As we know, annoyingly, his lawyers consistently referred to him as 'President Trump' in legal filings and when they speak about him in court. But it is the humbling moments when he has to sit at council's table, not by choice, but by law and required procedure, when he is referred to as 'criminal defendant Donald Trump' that the playing field is truly leveled, and that is when accountability comes a-knocking and hard."
Phang further noted how, once the trial commences, Trump will be at the mercy of the manners in which Judge Juan Merchan conducts the process, preventing him from "acting out" and forcing him to sit "humbly and quietly while the judicial system does its work."
Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email for comment on Saturday afternoon.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee, in recent weeks has seen polls begin to shift toward his presumptive general election opponent, President Joe Biden, with the increasing pressure and visibility of his criminal cases being partially to blame. Earlier polls suggested that at least one conviction on any of the nearly 90 criminal charges he is facing would likely result in swing state voters abandoning him in considerable numbers.
A Reuters/Ipsos survey from February found that 55 percent of potential voters would not support Trump at the general election if he were convicted of any felony charges he has pleaded not guilty to across his four criminal trials. Meanwhile, 58 percent said they would not vote for Trump if he were serving time in prison in November.
When broken down further, 51 percent of Republican voters said they would not vote for Trump if he becomes a convicted felon, with a further 25 percent saying they weren't sure. The poll surveyed 1,237 U.S. adults nationwide between February 9 and 12 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.91 percentage points.
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Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more
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