Former President Donald Trump predicted Thursday he might be able to win New York state in the 2024 election, saying the campaign will “make a play” to the typically blue state.
The former president has mostly remained in New York, his home state, for more than a week while he has to make mandatory court appearances in his so-called “hush-money” trial in Manhattan.
“Traditionally, a Democrat would win New York, but we’ve seen some new polls and I think we’re gonna do very well in New York,” President Trump told reporters on Thursday morning at a campaign stop at a Manhattan construction site, adding that other polls suggest he is leading in “every swing state.” A crowd of union workers chanted “four more years” along with the former president’s name, according to on-site reporters.
“It’s an amazing show of affection,” President Trump said at around 6:30 a.m., or three hours before Thursday’s trial is slated to start. “The Teamsters union loves me. We’ve built a lot of great buildings with the Teamsters. They’re very, very talented people. We used to do three floors a week in concrete on these buildings, and that’s because of these guys here.”
The former president, meanwhile, entered court Thursday for another trial date, which is likely to feature more witness testimony and a possible judge’s decision on whether he violated a gag order with social media posts. There are no trial dates on Wednesdays.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, charged President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, a class E felony in New York state. While President Trump has pleaded not guilty, prosecutors must convince the jury that he committed the crime in “furtherance of another crime” in order for it to be a felony, not a misdemeanor.
At issue are payments that were sent by the former president’s campaign to a former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to bury allegations about her personal life during the 2016 campaign. Prosecutors this week claimed that President Trump, Mr. Cohen, and former National Enquirer publisher and witness David Pecker hatched a scheme to find and suppress negative allegations against the former president during the campaign.
President Trump, namely, is accused of paying Mr. Cohen $130,000 who then distributed the money to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, to keep her from making allegations about an alleged affair she had with the former president in 2006, which he categorically denies.
The Trump legal team has said that the payments were normal legal expenses and has accused Mr. Cohen of being an unreliable witness, in part due to his previous felony conviction and because he frequently comments about President Trump in the media in order to keep himself relevant.
Meanwhile, the former president has said that Ms. Clifford submitted a letter to him saying that no affair ever took place, although she claimed that her statement in the letter was made as part of a non-disclosure agreement. His lawyers have also said that Ms. Clifford is using her allegations against President Trump to make a name for herself.
Earlier this week, Judge Juan Merchan held a hearing regarding alleged gag order violations committed by the former president and will issue a ruling on whether he violated the order in the future, although it’s not clear when. Prosecutors have sought a $1,000 fine for each alleged violation.
The former president’s lawyers have said the gag order is unconstitutional and violates his First Amendment right to free speech, notably when he is the presumptive Republican nominee for president during the middle of the 2024 campaign. His lawyers argue that recent posts he’s made about witnesses such as Mr. Cohen and Ms. Clifford are merely responses to attacks they have launched on him.
President Trump has also accused Judge Merchan of harboring a political animus toward him and pointed out that the judge’s daughter worked as a Democratic Party consultant. Under the gag order, he is allowed to publicly criticize the judge, Mr. Bragg, and prosecutors but cannot speak about witnesses, jury members, court staff, or the judge’s family members.
Because he didn’t allow him to attend the Washington hearing, the former president stated that Judge Merchan believes “he is above the Supreme Court, he is prohibiting me from going to the presidential immunity hearing where some of the great legal scholars will be arguing the case ... the most important case in many years on the Supreme Court.”
“Without presidential immunity, the presidency becomes a ceremonial position only, it will be decimated,” he added in the interview. “He’s prohibiting me from going. He is a radical-left Democrat.”
The trial is expected to last between six and eight weeks in total.
