'It would rattle him': Trump's longtime acquaintance shows how judge should handle him

Former President Donald Trump could be easily controlled by Judge Juan Merchan in the courtroom during the Manhattan hush money trial, his longtime acquaintance and civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton said on MSNBC — if only he's willing to throw a bit of Trump's bullying tactics back in his face.

His suggestion came in response to former RNC chair Michael Steele discussing the former president's post-courtroom rant to reporters, where he waved around a stack of clippings from right-wing news outlets and called the whole trial a sham.

"Well, that's Trump, you know?" said Steele. "Every corner that he's standing on is a stage, and he will use props. He will use whatever tool is available to him to create a narrative that he thinks best, A, positions him and, B, allows him to get away with stuff that other people ordinarily wouldn't get away with."

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"Rev, you know this to be true about Trump," he added, turning to Sharpton. "He will always do the thing he wants to do until someone stops him, and he doesn't believe anyone can stop him. And to this point, he's been right. In large measure, he's gotten away with pretty much everything he's attempted to do. He wanted to slow down the trials. Guess what, he slowed down the trials. So now he's got this platform in which he's out here with a stack of papers. We don't know what's in those papers, but he — you know, he's just telling us what they say and what they are, and that establishes the ongoing narrative, placing him as a victim, and that everyone who believes he's a victim thinks that this trial is wrong or is illegal or is improper, all of that, that feeds the beast out on the street. That's ultimately the court of public opinion that he's more interested in than the public opinion, if you will, of the jury or the judge."

"And I think that he is playing to that crowd that he wants to keep loyal and hoping that this jury somehow would be mesmerized by just his presence because he's that much of a narcissist," said Sharpton. "But that's why he also knows like in New York, we used to fight — I'd barnstorm and all of that. He doesn't like people that will fight back because like when he's saying the judge won't even let me go to my son's graduation, and I would have said, is that the kid that your wife was having when you were going out with the porn star? I mean, is that kid now 18?"

"It would totally rattle him," Sharpton added. "He likes to go where he's the only one throwing stuff. He can't take a punch back."

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