--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Rebecca Ibarra, filling in as host today.
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: Hi, I'm Andrea Bernstein, and I've been covering the proceedings for NPR.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: We're on the fifth week in the criminal trial of former President Trump. Andrea, you've been in the courtroom from the very beginning. What's it like inside?
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: Inside the court, there's a sort of ritual where the DA's team usually comes in at 9:00, and Trump's team comes in about 9:25. This team has been getting larger and larger as the trial's gone on.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And there's been some interesting visitors to the courtroom. House Speaker Mike Johnson and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy were there yesterday.
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: Yes, and Senator J.D. Vance, Senator Tom Tuberville, and Congresswoman Nicole Malia-Takis were also there.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: But what's really stunning is the action in the courtroom, because there is Donald Trump, the one-time president of the United States, sitting there day after day after day as these witnesses are laying out pretty tawdry tales of his past.
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: Michael Cohen is a key witness in this case. He's been testifying about the hush money payment and the 34 false business records.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And what's the crux of his testimony?
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: Michael Cohen is, to me, the apotheosis of a series of figures that have surrounded Donald Trump over the years. He basically would do anything for Donald Trump, would lie for him, would bully people, would go across the country threatening people.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: So, what's next in the trial?
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: The defense has begun its cross-examination, and they're really leaning into the idea that Cohen was not to be trusted. He just wanted revenge, he just wanted to get Trump.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: But, Andrea, you've covered Michael Cohen for a long time. He has lied and lied and lied and lied, for sure. But that doesn't mean he never tells the truth.
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: That's right. And the jury verdict will hang in large measure on whether the jury concludes that in this case, he told enough of the truth.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And what about the consequences of a conviction? Trump is a first-time offender, but it's a white-collar crime.
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: It's a serious crime, and the consequences of having a criminal conviction are something that we can't measure because we've never been in a situation like this before.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: Trump is famously unfiltered, especially about people he sees as disloyal. What has he been saying about the trial outside of the courtroom?
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: He's muttered a few things. He was admonished by the judge for being critical of Stormy Daniels at one point.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And what about his social media presence? He's been posting on Truth Social.
--:-- Andrea Bernstein: He's weaponized it in a way that I think we only got a glimpse of on Twitter. He's attacking witnesses, prosecutors, the judge in the case, even the jury, almost constantly.
--:-- Derek Hawkins: Hi, I'm Derek Hawkins, a national reporter at The Washington Post. I've been paying close attention to Trump's Truth Social account.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: So, how does Trump's language and rhetoric on Truth Social compare to what we saw on Twitter?
--:-- Derek Hawkins: He's much more belligerent. He's posting much more often, almost 30 times a day on Truth Social, while it was about 20 on Twitter.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And what about his list of targets? Is it the same?
--:-- Derek Hawkins: It's about the same, but the language he's using to go after them has become much more vitriolic.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And what about the ecosystem around Truth Social? How does it compare to the tabloid ecosystem that helped bring Trump to life?
--:-- Derek Hawkins: The ecosystem around Truth Social is different. It's not just sanitizing his image. It's not just protecting him from bad publicity and running glowing profiles. They're signal-boosting his message, taking the script that he writes every day, every hour, and refining it and fine-tuning it for their own unique audiences.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And what does this say about how Trump might govern in a second term?
--:-- Derek Hawkins: I think we're getting an unfiltered view of how Trump is going to behave in a second term. What his language and rhetoric are going to be like. Who among his perceived enemies he's going to attack. Who is going to be given access to his administration and what his priorities are going to be and how he's going to carry them out.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: And what about the Republican Party's posture towards him on Capitol Hill?
--:-- Derek Hawkins: The message is clearly reaching the Republican Party. The things he says on Truth Social, the rhetoric he uses there, the sort of buzzwords that he uses, you hear them on the Hill.
--:-- Rebecca Ibarra: This show was produced by Haleema Shah with help from Avishay Artsy and Denise Guerra, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by David Herman, and hosted by Rebeca Ibarra.
