Outside court, Trump tries to command the narrative. Inside, he can only sit in silence

The city of New York is “crime-ridden and dying,” according to Donald Trump. He has called a criminal case against him a “mess,” the judge hopelessly “conflicted,” and the prosecutor a “thug.” The former president’s attorneys claim that the entire borough of Manhattan is “overwhelmingly biased” against him.

But forfour days, a few dozen of his fellow New Yorkers told him how they felt, to his face, and there was nothing he could do about it.

A jury of Mr Trump’s peers has been assembled to hear the first criminal trial of a current or former president, who is charged with falsifying business records to conceal payments to an adult film star with whom he allegedly had an affair.

Hiding those payments tried to protect his election prospects in 2016, the beginning of what has now become a years-long effort to deceive voters and manipulate the outcome of a presidential election, according to prosecutors.

He loves his New York business, his New York real estate and the New York media that has his attention, but Mr Trump for years now has become more Florida man than the self-anointed bootstrapped Queens entrepreneur he propped himself up to be as he built his political persona.

This week, the former president returned to New York as a reluctant resident of his hometown, watching the group of his Manhattan neighbours fill the jury box where a verdict against him could be delivered in a few weeks.

The jurors live all over Manhattan, with different professional backgrounds, genders, interests and family lives. All have promised, unlike Mr Trump, to judge their fellow New Yorker fairly and impartially.

When his attorneys dug up prospective jurors’ old social media posts to try to weed out potential bias, Mr Trump heard himself