The first weeks of Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan have not gone well for the former president. Key prosecution witnesses such as former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, attorney Keith Davidson and onetime White House aide Hope Hicks have painted a damning portrait of Trump's plot to hide embarrassing information from the public, with the evident goal of impacting the 2016 election. At this point, it would require some arcane or technical point of law or jury nullification (thanks, perhaps to one or more MAGA-friendly jurors) to save him from being convicted.
In response, Trump and his various spokespeople and agents are trying to find new ways to make their hyperbolic messages to the MAGA faithful ever more extreme and graphic. The goal of such a propaganda strategy is to manipulate fear and other negative emotions in order to tie Trump’s followers even more closely to him, in what is already a cult-like relationship.
