Trump's hush money trial has made him an upstart outsider again just like 2016

THE last time Donald Trump won the presidency was in 2016, in unnervingly similar circumstances to 2024. He was an insurgent candidate then, who was regarded by voters as a celebrity entertainer and property mogul, not a politician.

- Sarah Baxter

The scenes inside a Manhattan courtroom, with exotic appearances by Stormy Daniels, the porn star who allegedly received $130,000 in covert hush money from Trump, and fixer Michael Cohen, the "rat" who flipped on his boss, could not have been better designed to recapture that upstart, outsider energy.

The glee felt by Trump's opponents at the prospect of the former president finally being held to account for his alleged crimes is misplaced. The non-stop attention paid to the case is undercutting Joe Biden's chief charge that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy and can never again be trusted with the keys to the White House. He doesn't look very dangerous, stuck in court for days on end.

Trump is the candidate entangled in four criminal cases, while Biden is a free agent, adding grist to the argument that Trump is the victim of a political witch-hunt aimed at preventing the US public from voting for the president they want. A criminal conviction may not do much to shift this perception. Republicans have convinced themselves that Trump is the true defender of the people's choice, notwithstanding the former's attempts to overturn the results of the last election - and reluctance to uphold the result of the next one, if it goes against him.