'He's a child' Trump is imploding because he thinks 'rules don't apply to him': biographer

Former President Donald Trump had a bad day on the witness stand at his civil fraud trial in New York, snapping at state attorneys and offering contradictory stories about his company's dubious property valuations in a case that could cost him his entire New York business. Ultimately, he helped prove part of the AG's case.

All of this cuts straight to the former president's psyche, argued biographer David Cay Johnston on MSNBC Monday.

"David, I have to ask you this," said substitute anchor Dr. Jason Johnson. "First, I always say, I hope you're engaging in self-care because you have been following this man for 30 years. I can't imagine what it's like to have been studying Trump and his corrupt, terrible personal behavior for all this time. I want to talk about one of the main lies here, with Trump trying to explain why his 10,000 square foot Trump Tower apartment was listed as 30,000 square feet in a statement to financial conditions."

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He explained that when Trump was asked why the valuation was too high, Trump claimed a broker assessed the total area as 30,000 square feet. He claimed it was because he had access to the roof.

"'When you add the roof, you're not far off," Trump said. When he looked at the document, he said that he realized that they took the size of one floor and multiplied it by three floors.

"They didn't take out the elevator and other things," Trump said.

Johnson confessed he was confused.

"This would be akin to me saying that because I'm in the lounge at the airport, I actually own the jets on the tarmac, right? That's as ridiculous as this is," he said.

"David, my question for you is, isn't this the kind of line that he's always engaged in?" Johnson continued. "This is a guy who pretended to be other people on the phone when he did interviews. So even though we're focused on this particular thing, this is just par for the course with Trump, right?"

"All of this fits a pattern of Donald's life," said David Cay Johnston. "He's a child. He believes that he is special. That the rules don't apply to him. And one of the basic questions of this case is, well, if your financial statements are not to be believed, and then why did you create them? Why did you go to the trouble of having them created at all if they're meaningless?"

The biographer said that Trump was trying to make a campaign speech to voters, not defend himself.

"And the reality is, Donald has always lied, cheated, and stolen from people," continued Johnston. "He has hired illegal immigrants from Poland to work for him. He has — the only casino case in Atlantic City, cheating a customer. Donald Trump's casino. He was in bed up to his eyeballs with one of the biggest drug traffickers in the United States. He had children gambling in his casinos, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds."

"So, to Donald, he can do no wrong," Johnston added. "It's not possible because he is special, and of course, he should not just be president. He should be, as he's planned all along, to be our dictator because no one else is competent in Donald's mind."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

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