Add Trump's Vow To Testify In His Trial To His Long List Of Broken Promises

NEW YORK — Making Mexico pay for a border wall, creating a “big, beautiful healthcare plan” to replace Obamacare, balancing the federal budget and avoiding Minnesota if he lost the 2020 election have new company on the lengthy list of broken Donald Trump promises: his vow to testify in his New York City hush money trial.

Despite repeated pledges to take the witness stand to proclaim his innocence, Trump had his lawyers rest their case Tuesday after calling only two witnesses, neither of them the coup-attempting former president.

Trump refused to answer shouted questions as to why he didn’t testify as he left the lower Manhattan courtroom after the brief morning session. In recent months, he has on many occasions said he was eager to tell his side of the story in the business records falsification case that could send him to prison for as long as four years.

“Yeah, I would testify, absolutely,” he told reporters just three days before the trial began five weeks ago. “I’m testifying. I tell the truth, I mean, all I can do is tell the truth.”

Even his lawyers suggested it was possible Trump could testify — last week, Todd Blanche told Judge Juan Merchan it was a decision that had not yet been made — before essentially admitting Monday in open court that it would not happen.

Legal experts and observers, of course, said they were not in the least surprised that testimony ended without hearing from Trump.

“He was never going to testify,” said Ty Cobb, a former top lawyer in the White House when it was under Trump and who is now a Trump critic.

“If he had taken the stand, they would have cross-examined him for three days with every lie he has told about E. Jean Carroll, maybe January 6th, the classified documents, Stormy ― does