CNN anchors John Berman and Sara Sidner held a dramatic reenactment of former President Donald Trump’s smackdown with Judge Lewis Kaplan at the defamation trial involving E. Jean Carroll, whom Trump sexually abused and defamed.
Trump and his attorney lit off some spectacular courtroom fireworks Wednesday at the trial that will decide how much money Trump will have to pay Carroll — who is seeking $10 million in damages — for defaming her while he was president. They included pounding the table and being threatened with removal by Judge Lewis Kaplan.
On Thursday’s edition of CNN News Central, Berman and Sidner prefaced a guest segment with a reading of the court transcript in order to more vividly illustrate Trump’s behavior, with Sidner deadpanning Trump’s lines and Berman hamming it up as the judge:
JOHN BERMAN: With us now. As for Manhattan prosecutor Jeremy Saland and counselor, we did just get word, by the way, that Judge Kaplan has taken the bench. I’m very curious to see what he might say at the outset of this trial today, because I just want to go over, once again, the exchange between this federal judge and Donald Trump.Jeremy, we’re going to do a dramatic reading here. I’m going to play the part of Judge Kaplan. Sarah is going to play the part of Donald Trump. Okay, here we go.Judge Kaplan says, “Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t
have to consider excluding you from the trial. I understand you’re probably very eager for me to do that.”.SARA SIDNER AS TRUMP: I would love it!JOHN BERMAN: I know you would. You just can’t control yourself in these circumstances apparently.SARA SIDNER AS TRUMP: You can’t either!All right, counselor, you can’t either. Someone in a courtroom just said that to a federal judge. I just want your reaction to that.JEREMY SALAND: You know, Donald Trump has become the personification of the decimation, if you will, of law and order. And it’s really, really disgusting that this is allowed to happen.But the problem that the judge finds himself in… any judge where Donald Trump is before him or her is really in a real bind. Because if you remove Donald Trump from court, you are going to give him what he wants, right?But if you allow him to speak and say the things that he does to cause that disarray, to cause that chaos, to cause a complete wrench in the process, you’re also giving him what he wants.We mentioned the other day about a tight leash. There has to be a mechanism to do that, because if it were you or me, any of the three of us, despite your amazing acting skills, it was any one of us. We’d be held in contempt. We would beremoved. We’d be, find ourselves in major trouble and our credibility, obviously would be obliterated.JOHN BERMAN: I just want to hit that point one more time, because one of the things that Donald Trump always complains about is he’s being treated differently here. It seems to me what you’re saying. He may be being treated differently here, and that anyone else who just told a judge “you can’t control yourself” would have been held in contempt and thrown out right then and there.JEREMY SALAND: Unequivocally. And none of us, for the most part, would have the gall to behave the way he does. It’s petulant and it’s disrespectful, but he really believes he he has the ability and the right, more importantly, this is a right to do so. And that’s not the case.But it really puts the justice system in a bind. Because no matter what you do to this man, you will lose and he will use it as a weapon. He will weaponize it. And that’s frightening for the process going forward.
Watch above via CNN News Central.