CNN host Kaitlan Collins said Monday on “Anderson Cooper 360” that former President Donald Trump is now being careful because he does not want to be sent to jail for violating the gag order in his New York business record trial.
Cooper said, “I just want to read what the judge actually said to Trump today. He said, ‘Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand that the last thing I want to do is put you in jail. You are the former president United States and possibly the next president, as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings, which I imagine you want to end as quickly as possible.’ Just politically, Kaitlan, what would what would this mean?”
Collins said, “I mean, the argument is that Trump would relish it in the sense that he would be able to argue what he’s been arguing everyday tie that courtroom that he is being politically persecuted here, that he can’t use his first amendment rights.”
She continued, “The idea that Donald Trump would actually want to go to jail is ridiculous. Anyone who knows him knows that he doesn’t even like to stay in a hotel when he goes on foreign trips, when he wouldn’t as president. It was a whole thing to actually get him to stay overnight in places.”
Collins added, “So this idea that he actually does want to do this for the optics perspective, I mean, when you speak to his closest advisers and allies, they’ll say that’s completely far-fetched. Do they think it would work to their advantage? Maybe politically, but I do think Donald Trump heeding this is something that you never see Donald Trump do, which is actually which is actually words. And he keeps acknowledging that every time he goes into that courtroom, even if he is lying about what the gag order actually says, he can and cannot do, he is being careful.”
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