'Everyone and their mother': Trump team and prosecution grapple with visceral opinions of the former president

If the prosecution and defense in former President Donald Trump's hush-money trial can agree on one thing, it's this: he's not quite like any other defendant.

He was the most powerful man in the world and wants that job again. His mastery of media — including social platforms — made him known to virtually every American. The the vast majority of them have strong visceral reactions to him — with barely more than a third rating him likable, according to Gallup.

"We may be in an alternate universe because President Trump is known to everybody," his lawyer Todd Blanche said on Tuesday, the second day of the trial.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass echoed him: “Everyone and their mother has an opinion about this case, and what the right outcome should be.”

That presents the court, and its officers, with a conundrum: There may not be 12 eligible jurors in New York — or America, for that matter — who don't know what they think of Trump.

Incredibly, Judge Juan Merchan had to assess Tuesday whether several jurors' social media posts about the defendant rendered them unfit to serve. That simply doesn't happen in many trials.

But this first prosecution of a president, sitting or former, is bringing new precedent after new precedent.

No lawyer has ever had to ask prospective jurors whether they could set aside their personal feelings about a president, sitting or former, to judge whether he's guilty of a crime. And yet by early afternoon Tuesday, both Blanche and Steinglass had done just that.

"We’re trying to pick a jury that can be fair to both sides," Steinglass said as he opened the selection — or voire dire — process. "This case has nothing to do with your personal politics … it’s not a referendum on the Trump presidency."

Blan