What’s in a name? Trump’s legal team faces an unusual balancing act: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, senior national political reporter Jonathan Allen explains why it's important to note the various names Donald Trump has been called during his New York criminal trial. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd examines the impacts a disinterested electorate could have on the 2024 race.

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What’s in a name? Trump’s legal team faces an unusual balancing act

By Jonathan Allen

Donald Trump has been called a lot of names in the first six days of his New York hush-money trial.

“We will call him ‘President Trump’ out of respect for the office that he held from 2017 to 2021,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told the jury Monday. “And as everybody knows, it’s the office he’s running for right now. He’s the Republican nominee.”

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Longtime tabloid publisher David Pecker, who testified that he conspired with Trump in 2015 and 2016 to “catch and kill” stories that could harm Trump’s election effort, told the court that when they spoke, “I would call him Donald.”

Judge Juan Merchan greeted the former president Tuesday with a standard address for a defendant: “Good morning, Mr. Trump.” That’s also been the form favored by prosecutors.

The what’s-in-a-name question is just one of the unusual aspects of the first criminal trial of a former American president, but it points to tension points for Trump and his defense team.

Blanche has a tough balancing act between the audience of one at the defense table and the