CNN’s Laura Coates Asks Maggie Haberman How Trump Will ‘Handle’ Sexual Abuse Coming Up At New Trial

CNN anchor Laura Coates asked CNN commentator and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman how former President Donald Trump will “handle” all of his past misconduct being introduced at his current trial, including the sexual abuse for which he was found liable.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has filed notice that if Trump decides to testify in the Stormy Daniels hush money-election interference trial that got underway this week, he will seek to discredit Trump using a list of “all misconduct and criminal acts of the defendant.”

Haberman was a guest on Wednesday night’s edition of CNN’s Laura Coates Live, during which Coates noted that “You know Trump better than most” and asked for her insights on how Trump would deal with his past being brought up in the new trial:

COATES: Maggie, I’m so glad that you’re here. You almost need no introduction when I talk to you about all the things I’m interested in. So, I’m really glad you’re here right now.

You know Trump better than most. You’ve written this fascinating book as well that details so much of the political psychology of him as well. I’m wondering, even if a small number of the prior cases get introduced or admitted in any way here, and there’s the past legal run-ins, how do you think Trump is going to handle that being addressed?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: It’s an excellent question, and thank you for having me. I think that he will not decide whether he is going to testify until he knows whether those cases are going to be allowed by the judge. I think that the Sandoval hearing will be pretty revealing in terms of what he will be able to say on the stand and what he won’t.

We’ve already seen in these past cases, at least one of them in the E. Jean Carroll case, a deposition he gave, and the New York Attorney General case was used in that case. And so, we know that his past words and things he has said, and things that he has been accused of or found liable for can be very damaging to him in other cases.

I don’t think that he is as likely to testify if all of these things are allowed to be asked about. If he does and he decides to go ahead with it, I think that he will say, you know, this is unfair, this is untrue. You know, he will continue to deny the allegations in the E. Jean Carroll case as he has. He will continue to say that the finding in the New York Attorney General case is a witch hunt and unfair. I think you will hear very similar things to what we’ve heard before.

COATES: You know, as a prosecutor, almost on the one hand, wanting to see if you can poke the bear and get him to not tow the attorney’s party line. On the other hand, it will become rabbit hole after rabbit hole if he is allowed to testify on all these matters. You can’t really constrain him in the same way.

But in the court of public opinion, so to speak, even for these jurors who will have to know just what’s in front of them, they might know a great deal of this already, and he might be enticed into trying to change their mind.

HABERMAN: There’s no question that Donald Trump sees himself as his best salesman. And we saw that in the E. Jean Carroll case, the second one, where there was a jury and that he was present for. He was clearly trying to make eye contact, he was trying to smile at people. He believes he is his own best salesman and that he thinks that some of these folks are his supporters.

Now, what we saw in the E. Jean Carroll is it took that jury exactly a few hours to render a judgment of $83 million against him. So, you know, I don’t think his sales abilities worked so well there. I do think you’re going to see him try to do something similar.

To your point about he could go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, I’m confident his lawyers have told him that. But at the end of the day, he is ultimately the person who is on trial. And, as you know, a lot of defendants, not just him, want to defend themselves and they want to argue in their favor. And I think that his lawyers are going to be hard pressed to stop him if he really decides that’s what he’s interested in.

Watch above via CNN’s Laura Coates Live.

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