Trump's Trials Are His Campaign

The legal system braces for a grandstanding reelection strategy

CERTAIN WONDERS YOU can appreciate only once you've seen them with your own eyes. In a Manhattan courtroom on January 11, I spent three hours observing the back of Donald Trump's head. I've seen him many times but never so close, with him so still, for so long. His lawyers were giving their closing arguments in a civil-fraud lawsuit, making their fine legal points and plumping their client's savvy and net worth. ("President Trump is worth billions ...") But I couldn't stop staring at Trump's pinkish scalp. His famous sallow blond comb-over, thinner than it once was, started as a part on the left and flowed like a river eastbound and down until it merged with another cataract of hair cascading behind his opposite ear. Little tufts sprayed off the sides and stuck out over his bunched-up jacket collar. The former president was hunched forward, elbows on the table. You didn't need to see his face to know he was glowering.

The civil case, brought by the office of New York State attorney general Letitia James, should have been a humiliation for Trump. It strikes at his business, his family, and the heart of his original identity as a real-estate tycoon. Yet at a crucial juncture in the race for the Republican nomination, he decided to pull himself away from the campaign. Trump was complaining that his many trials were keeping him off the trail, but in fact his attendance at this closing argument was not required. He was perfectly willing to sit through the undignified process.