Lawrence O’Donnell says virtually no one is showing up to protest Donald Trump’s fraud trial in New York because with more than a thousand people from all 50 states in prison or facing charges for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the former president’s supporters now know “there is nothing [he] can do to save them from going to prison.”
“Donald Trump went to court today and once again New York City did not care,” O’Donnell said Monday, after Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom to face state charges of inflating asset values to obtain loans.
The MSNBC anchor reflected on a time when there was “much misplaced public worry about what could happen the very first time defendant Trump had to go to court in New York City.”
Since then, Donald Trump has been indicted three more times, but the prospect of a protest has dwindled.
“One of the intended effects of criminal prosecution is deterrence,” noted O’Donnell. “Every potentially violent Trump nut in America now knows that there is nothing Donald Trump can do to save them from going to prison if they want to go to an American courthouse and go to war for Donald Trump.”
“There hasn’t been a whiff of violence or any even unruly protest at any of the Trump Court appearances,” noted the MSNBC anchor.
O’Donnell said that during the court hearing in Manhattan, “Donald Trump became just another guy from Queens whose life took enough wrong turns for him to end up as a defendant in the Manhattan Courthouse.”
“Donald Trump has obviously decided to attend the trial not because of what happens in the courtroom but so that he can dominate the media coverage of the trial,” O’Donnell said.
The MSNBC anchor noted that they would not be showing what Trump said outside of the courthouse because his statements “are filled with lies.”
“Everything Donald Trump said outside the courtroom was specifically designed to distract from the actual elements of the case inside the courtroom,” O’Donnell said.
Watch the full clip above on YouTube
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