Trump teeters on brink of violating gag order: ‘He knows what he’s doing’

Donald Trump spent the past week attacking the daughter of the judge in his New York hush money trial it started after an initial gag order was imposed barring Trump from commenting publicly about lawyers Witnesses Court staff and jurors in the trial now scheduled to start April 15th when the days that followed Trump attacked the judge's daughter at least four times on his truth social platform posting her name also posting a news story with photos of her and he basically painted a Target on thi

s young woman's back so much so the judge had to adjust the order to cover his own family members and family members of the district attorney writing quote this pattern of attacking family members of presiding jurors and attorneys assigned to his cases serves no legitimate purpose it merely injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings not not only they but their family members as well are fair game for defendants vital yesterday the judge expanded the gag order on T

rump since then Trump has still been attacking the judge but notably he has stopped just short of attacking the judge's daughter joining me now as MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin and first I just want to start with this that you every time we do one of these you can sort of lose sight of how just completely out of unprecedented it is how how different it is this it just does not happen it doesn't happen in courtrooms it doesn't happen with defendants we're just in a totally different Univer

se in which this man with a lot of power and a lot of followers is berating the judges daughter yeah and every time you and I get together or I show up on other shows talking about the extraordinariness of the moment that in and of itself becomes ordinary for viewers who then grow inoculated to this kind of behavior that is so far beyond the pale of what's acceptable in most courtrooms in the United States that we forget or even what would be attempted like you know what I mean like not like yes

it's unacceptable but even just like in a universe in which there are millions of criminal defendants like this just doesn't really happen no doesn't because most criminal defendants would face consequences far sooner than Donald Trump has so there have been some consequences at least the judge order the the gag order has been expanded that's right and uh again we've seen this we saw this in the past with Eng gorin we seen in other places where he does know what he's doing and so he stops just

short yeah he stops just short so what does he do now he reposts other people's statements about the daughter in order to skirt the prohibition which is framed as he can't make or IR others to make public statements about certain folks he's not making a statement he's not directing others to make a statement he's merely republishing a statement but that has the exact same thrust and gist to the things that he was saying before um there's also now uh a request for recusal which strikes me as a yo

u know I don't know a not serious motion I don't know what it's worse than that because it's the tail wagging the dog you one of of the things I noticed in the opposition that they wrote to the gag order just a couple of hours before judge Mara issued that gag order is they said all Trump was doing here was trying to amplify defense arguments about Maran so in his post about maran's daughter last week they claim that really what that was about was just trying to help his lawyers communicate to p

eople how necessary recusal was I don't want to rehash exactly what he posted but that was not the aim but here what they're trying to do is conflate the political the legal so that it all collapses into one and take what would be opposition research in an ordinary political campaign and sort of migrate it into this case and the toan horse of a recusal motion right so I guess the question is like you know there there's always been this sort of there's these two universes right like we saw this i

n the litigation after uh the election 2020 which is they can make all the wild claims they want to and be hosted by Republican lawmakers and say all sorts crazy stuff as soon as those claims enter a courthouse they got reduced to Rubble what good does it do them to doing this in a court I guess is the question I think it's it's not that it does them any good in the court it's that the court is the forum for their political campaign now right all the courts are his stage effectively so that anyt

hing he says in court gets Amplified repeated and becomes a part of his political messaging it's not about trying to obtain a particular result in a court of law it's about trying to obtain a result through the courts in our political system right because ultimately he's not he doesn't care about winning in the court he cares about winning the election because that's the only thing that will give him essentially the immunity and security from immediate prosecution and and possible prison that he

would otherwise be facing and perversely I think he'd almost prefer to lose in these trial courts knowing that it will help him electorally and if he can only survive through November and Prevail in the election he doesn't have to worry about those initial losses maran's not going to recuse Maran is not going to recuse all right these are Ruben thank you hey everyone MSNBC has a new and improved app you'll get real time alerts and Analysis live blogs in-depth essays video highlights and the bes

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