What’s in a name? Trump’s legal team faces an unusual balance: From the Politics Department

Welcome to the online version of From the Policy Deska nightly newsletter that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News politics team on the campaign, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, senior national political reporter Jonathan Allen explains why it’s important to note the various names Donald Trump was called during his criminal trial in New York. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd examines the impacts a disengaged electorate could have on the 2024 election race.

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What’s in a name? Trump’s legal team faces an unusual balance

By Jonathan Allen

Donald Trump was called many names in the first six days of his trial in New York.

“We will call him ‘President Trump’ out of respect for the office he held from 2017 to 2021,” Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told the jury on Monday. “And as everyone knows, that’s the position he’s running for right now. He’s the Republican candidate.”

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Longtime tabloid editor David Pecker, who testified that he conspired with Trump in 2015 and 2016 to “capture and kill” stories that could harm Trump’s election effort, told the court that when they talked, “I would call him Donald ”.

Judge Juan Merchan greeted the former president on Tuesday with a standard speech for a defendant: “Good morning, Mr. Trump.” This has also been the preferred way for prosecutors.

The question of what’s in a name is just one of the unusual aspects of the first criminal trial of a former American president, but it points to points of tension for Trump and his defense team.

Blanche has a difficult balance between the one-person audience at the defense table and the 12-person audience in the jury box — and between Trump as the most powerful man in America at one time and as a common defendant now.

Trump requires his employees to refer to him as “president,” which is not unusual for former presidents.

But there are other reasons Trump’s lawyers call him that. On the one hand, his broader legal and public relations strategy for the most important federal charges he faces is based on an argument that he should be immune from prosecution for acts committed as president.

And while the New York defense team would certainly like jurors to conclude that Trump was too powerful to bother with the details of how an aide was repaid for silencing a porn star, Blanche suggested that she is aware of the risk that a jury could be alienated if the defendant appears to think he is above the peers assigned to judge him.

After explaining why she would call Trump “the president,” Blanche immediately sought to frame her client as a normal guy.

“But – and this is important – he is not just our former president. He’s not just the Donald Trump you’ve seen on TV, read about and seen in pictures,” Blanche said. “He is also a man. He is a husband. He is a father. And he is a person, just like you and like me.”

Trump may be the most recognized man on Earth. And yet jurors will have to decide whether this Trump, by any other name, would be equally guilty or innocent.

Read more here →

Will voters wake up on Election Day?

By Chuck Todd

The latest NBC News poll contains an alarming result. We asked a question we ask every election year – on a scale of 1 to 10, how interested are you in the upcoming election? And according to the results, we recorded the lowest level of electoral interest this decade. Fewer people chose “10” in this poll than in any presidential election year we’ve tested since 2004, with a brief exception in early 2012 that quickly rose again.

As I recently documented, it is not surprising that so many voters have shown disinterest in this election. The electorate desperately wants to change leaders, but both political parties have offered more of the same, so it stands to reason that the electorate will show less interest in this election than in the first showdown between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2020 or in Trump’s race against Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Ultimately, barring some event in the fall that resets the electorate’s mindset, it appears we are headed for a lower turnout election. That has its own voting consequences and makes third-party candidates — and the various idiosyncrasies of each battleground state — more important than usual. When the variance increases, so do the potential Electoral College outcomes.

In short, this poll only reinforces the trends I’ve been writing about over the past few weeks. This will be an electorate that will decide late, thanks to voters who decided to ignore an election that they believe they already understand, without needing any new information. I truly believe that most of the surveys carried out until October will tell us very little. We know what 90% of the electorate will do – it is the last 10% of “undecided” voters, who oscillate between the two parties or oscillate between voting and not voting, who will decide this election.

And the lack of appeal at the top of the ticket, combined with the feeling among many voters that neither party has the answers on the economy or foreign policy, means that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the “factor in deciding who runs his course.” to victory.

Read more from Chuck here →

That’s all from The Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback – like or dislike – send us an email at newsletter@nbcuni.com

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