Maggie Haberman and Jon Karl Roast Trump Over Trial/Campaign Schedule: ‘The Campaign Is In The Courtroom’

New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman and ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl roasted former President Donald Trump’s campaign schedule, which has ceded ground to Trump’s packed trial schedule.

Trump’s rallies are less frequent than they were in 2020, at least partially due to his decision to show up in courtrooms where his attendance has thus far been voluntary.

Haberman and Karl were guests on a recent edition of the Vox Media podcast On with Kara Swisher, during which the pair expressed bemusement at Trump “preferring” to spend time in court highlighting “objectively undesirable circumstances” than campaigning:

KARA SWISHER: But Maggie, one of the things he wants to do is to drag it out is because he’s got this very complex legal and campaign schedule over the coming months, but he likes to appear in court because it’s good for fundraising. Shockingly. But it is.

What is the thinking here inside? Like, let’s let’s use this as a continual Trump’s in the news. Is it a good thing to be in the news for?

MAGGIE HABERMAN: He’s decided that, you know, he’s going to try to turn this into a positive as much as possible for the reasons you said. It has a strong fundraising effect with his base. It has a galvanizing of, you know, victimhood effect with his base. .

I also think, Kara, I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the last couple of days. I think he prefers this to the act of campaigning. You know, his advisers had been saying a few weeks ago, when I covered a rally of his in New Hampshire, his advisers there were saying he’s going to do four days of two rallies a day each week before the the two weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

That’s now down to two days a week with multiple events. And instead he’s going to court. I think this is what he would rather be doing right now.

And I think part of it is because he’s a control freak, and I think he believes that no one else can do this the way he can, and he’ll have done whatever he could to argue on his own behalf. But that is the thinking.

I don’t think. Just for a technical note, if he appears at the E Jean Carroll trial, which I do think he’s going to do, that starts on January 16th, which is the day after the caucuses. I don’t expect he will go that day. He’s currently scheduled to go straight to New Hampshire.

But I do think that he will take a break from the campaign trail. We have never seen anything like this.

KARA SWISHER: He enjoys it. Is what you’re saying.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: I think he prefers it. I think it grievances. His pretend victimhood is his preferred state.

And one of the things that was striking about 2020, among many things, but just on a on a pure campaign level, put aside, put aside Covid, and put aside everything else about the Trump presidency. He doesn’t really know how to run from out front.

He knows how to run from behind. He knows how to be a challenger. He doesn’t really know how to be an incumbent. And so this puts him in his preferred state.

But again, it just it blocks out the news cycles. It blocks that attention that his rivals can get. I think that he has decided he is going to turn what are objectively undesirable circumstances into as much of a positive as he can.

JONATHAN KARL: And this is a campaign, it’s indistinguishable from his, from his legal cases.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: Correct.

JONATHAN KARL: And and it’s very.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: Much being run by I mean, they’re all involved. I mean, you know, his his political advisors are, you know, as aware and involved in what is happening on the legal front as anything else.

JONATHAN KARL: And he spends more time with his lawyers, with his legal team than he does with his political team. But, but, but even when he’s with the political team, as Maggie points out, it’s about that. The lawyers. I mean, it is it’s worth noting this is a guy that is campaigning very little.

MAGGIE HABERMAN: Yep. Correct.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, you just just compare his schedule with his schedule in 2016 or his schedule in 2020. or more relevantly, compare it to what Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie are doing. I mean, he he has spent precious little time in Iowa.And he’s spent very little time in New Hampshire. .

And this is, you know, somebody I mean, and even though even the rallies that he’s holding, are much smaller venues, I don’t doubt his ability to get a crowd. I would never do that. .

But but there are much smaller venues, and there are fewer of them. It’s like the campaign is is really in the courtroom.

I mean, Maggie may have a more precise count, but I think he has already during the civil case, he’s already spent ten days in court, at least ten days in court in a in a case where he did not, he was not required, like today, not required to be in court. So, you know, you literally had a situation where he was spending more time in the courtroom than he was, in any kind of campaign event.

Watch above via the Vox Media podcast On with Kara Swisher.