'It's tearing him up': Ex-lawyer says court experience is 'mentally torturing' Trump

Donald Trump's historic first trial, with its rules and lack of deference to the presidential status he thinks he's due, is really hurting him.

That's according to his one-time attorney Tim Parlatore, who appeared on CNN Tuesday night to weigh in on his former client's psyche now that he's into his second week of the historic criminal trial in which he's charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to tamp down an alleged sexual affair with adult movie actress Stormy Daniels to manipulate the outcome of the 2016 election.

Parlatore, who repped Trump for more than a year in his defense against the federal election subversion case and the case involving the hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, sees a man accustomed to a certain kind of pomp being forced to slog through weeks of a trial in which his status is very much criminal defendant.

"He's a guy used to being the one standing up and making the speeches himself, and the fact that he has to sit there all day, every day silently standing up whenever the judge tells him to stand up, sitting down when the judge tells him to sit down — and instead of being allowed to say anything, he has to have somebody like Todd Blanche do all the speaking for him. I think it's tearing him up that he can't be standing up there and doing it," Parlatore said.

Trump began his second week of trial sitting silently through hours of testimony in which one-time crony and National Enquirer's former publisher David Pecker described "catch and kill" schemes he employed to stop potentially damaging stories about Trump.

He was described as as Trump's “eyes and ears” during the 2016 presidential campaign, and he ticked off how their close-knit bond helped insulate from potentially damaging stories — including allegations that Trump fathered a love child with a maid, and the months-long affair he was accused of having with a Playboy model.

Parlatore described the effect the courtroom experience will be having on Trump.

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"I've had some clients like that that when the prosecution is going on with their opening statement, they're handing me note after note after note saying 'That's a lie! That's not true!'," he said.

"And that's exactly the kind of thing that I think he was doing in the debates back in 2016 when people were saying things, making the faces and cutting them off 'Wrong! and all that kinda stuff. ... This is, I think, mentally torturing him, that he has to sit there and go through this."

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