New York trial winds down — without Trump's testimony

NEW YORK — After a five-week run, the Donald Trump show at a Manhattan courtroom is winding down with two questions outstanding: Will he be convicted, and will anyone care?

The answer to the first could come as early as next week — with closing arguments scheduled for Tuesday — while the jury could be out on the second for some time.

As testimony concluded Tuesday without the former president taking the stand, Trump being on criminal trial has, in practice, done little to sway public opinion. It has captured the national political press corps inside a one-block radius near Chinatown for more than a month, while leaving the viewers at home seemingly unfazed possibly because the proceedings aren’t on TV.

And while Trump and his allies have led rallying cries of “banana republic” and “kangaroo court,” only handfuls of supporters with their signs and flags have bothered to show up for him in the public protest area outside the courthouse — which has drawn an equally underwhelming showing of anti-Trump demonstrators.

“We appreciate you suffering with us,” Trump said to the gaggle of news cameras that awaited him in the courthouse hallway Tuesday morning, as they had done the previous 19 days of his trial. “Look, you’ve been here with us for five weeks and you see it, the crowds outside. We can't get — it's not a very big thing for us. We don't really care that much.”

Since mid-April, Trump’s weekday routine has revolved around the rules, schedules and metal barricades of the Manhattan criminal courthouse. Having a former president on trial while campaigning for the office — an unprecedented spectacle in American politics — was widely expected to make shock waves.

But it was a big day, crowd-wise, outside 100 Centre Street, when, at its peak, there were roughly two dozen Trump supporters, and even fewer counter-demonstrators.

Trump has established a rhythm at the courthouse: Morning and end of day press gaggles where he has vacillated between railing against the economy under President Joe Biden and accusing the judge presiding over his case of corruption. Surrogates in recent weeks have held their own press conferences outside to bash both the court and witnesses, even as their comings and goings visibly annoyed Justice Juan Merchan.

“I think the Democrats thought all of these cases would be something to hang as many things as they can on him, and it’s backfired,” Bill White, a longtime Trump family friend and a top donor to his campaign, told POLITICO. “People are feeling bad for him, even people who don’t like him.”

White was among more than a dozen prominent Trump allies present in the courtroom on Tuesday, a list that included Trump’s son Don Jr., as well as members of Congress.

And despite the indoor temperatures rising with each passing day of the Manhattan springtime — prompting court visitors and members of Trump’s own entourage over the last couple weeks to wipe away sweat while packed into benches — Trump has stuck to the line he began deploying in mid-April, that he is “freezing” inside the courthouse and is “sitting in an icebox.”

While prominent Trump world villains like Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen spent days on the witness stand, their testimony largely failed to generate the types of eye-catching headlines some had expected from a trial stemming from hush-money payments paid to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential election.

The payments have been public since 2018 and seem to largely be baked in with the electorate after years of stories on the issue. Polls conducted since the start of the trial have shown Trump largely maintaining his lead over Biden in critical battleground states.

“That’s why he’s up in the polls,” White said of the trial and continued coverage surrounding it. “People are not stupid in this country.”

Trump has not been absent from the campaign trail or television over the last month. Despite the trial’s scheduling constraints, he has managed to campaign in both battleground and safe states while improving his fundraising performance in April. And before departing Trump Tower for court on Tuesday morning, as he has done several days before trial, Trump sat for television interviews with stations in the battleground states of Nevada and Pennsylvania.

After the day’s session, Trump was scheduled to head to Texas for a fundraising event on Wednesday before returning to New York in time for a Thursday rally in the South Bronx. This weekend, he is expected to appear in the swing state of North Carolina at the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race in Charlotte.

As soon as next week, the jury is set to determine Trump’s fate in what is likely the only of his four criminal cases expected to come to a resolution before the November election.

Both sides are set to deliver closing arguments next Tuesday.