Trump’s MAGA Allies Offer Their Most Deranged Defense Yet

As Donald Trump’s New York City criminal trial comes to a close, the former president has been increasingly surrounded by loyalists and defenders who decry what they see as a grave miscarriage of justice: a witch hunt aimed at undercutting a wildly popular leader; a show trial out of Stalinist Russia.

On Tuesday, as his defense rested without Trump taking the stand, his political posse once more gathered outside the Manhattan courthouse. This time, however, their argument was slightly different: Trump isn’t just a victim—he’s a regular guy being beaten down and persecuted by a vast cabal of venomous elites.

“What happens to any of you if the courts in New York come after any of you because of something you said? Because you said something that the ruling class didn’t like?” Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said Tuesday. “That’s what these other countries are all about. They shut down the ruling class. They want to be sure that anyone that speaks up against the ruling class disappears.”

“They want Donald Trump to disappear, they want to send him to jail, they want to take him off the main stage, because they know he’s their biggest danger to taking the ruling class—,” Patrick continued before being cut off by a reporter, who asked if he didn’t consider Trump to be a member of that ruling class.

“No!” the Texas politician squeaked, turning toward the reporter. “Donald Trump is not a member of the ruling class.”

As Patrick folded back into the sycophantic crowd, former deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka attempted to further shut down the idea that Trump—who served as president from 2016 to 2020, claims a net worth in the billions, and is currently running to reclaim the highest position in the American government—is a member of the ruling class.

“Would a member of the ruling class be facing 730 years in prison? What a pathetic question,” Gorka mocked while clad in Trump’s signature courtroom combo of blue suit, white shirt, and extra-long red tie. “And he’s a member of the elite? That’s pathetic. You’re not a journalist.”

Last year, Trump and his namesake company were found guilty of vastly inflating the worth of their assets by at least $812 million. Trump’s actual net worth is unclear—and it has recently taken a sizable hit as a result of numerous multimillion-dollar damages—but he is undoubtedly a millionaire several times over and owns a number of lavish properties. He has recently seen a windfall thanks to his ownership of Truth Social, a media and technology company that lost more than $300 million in the first quarter of 2024 but is nevertheless worth billions thanks to an overinflated stock market valuation.

Trump is accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.