Trump’s campaign by trial: Courthouse outbursts and cries of victimhood

He didn’t have to be there, and according to his attorneys, he didn’t want to be. Days earlier, Donald Trump’s lawyers tried to convince a judge to postpone closing arguments in his fraud trial altogether, until the end of the month, so he could be with his family after the death of his mother-in-law.

Instead, the former president turned a hallway inside New York County Supreme Court in lower Manhattan into a press conference on 11 January. As he had done several times over the four months prior, he sat with his lawyers at the defence table, where he was photographed in images blasted across news networks and on social media. But for the first time, he used the microphone in front of him to lash out at the judge in front of him, the attorney general suing him, and the case itself.

Hours earlier, he was in Iowa, answering a round of softball questions from a supportive Fox News audience on a brightly lit stage that looked more like a game show than a town hall.

After he left Judge Arthur Engoron’s courtroom, Mr Trump went to one of his brand-building properties in New York City to give a press conference aired on the same network.

The chain of events underscored his reliance on his growing legal battles for his own campaign for the presidency, using his criminal and civil cases to cast himself as a victim of political persecution, while telling his supporters that what he claims is a conspiracy against him will come for them, too, unless he stops them.

The trials have become his campaign, packed with court appearances, and the campaign is his chance to bury the charges, if elected.

In dozens of posts on social media and in campaign fundraising messages, he has repeatedly falsely claimed that he’s being forced off the