We’re now into the second week of Donald Trump’s criminal trial, and no one could have predicted the insanity that took place during week 1. To cap off the crazy week, a Trump supporter set himself on fire outside the courtroom on Friday after throwing out pamphlets filled with conspiracy theories. Jurors were crying due to the anxiety they were facing, and Trump repeatedly fell asleep in between violating the gag order against him. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses the first week of insanity and what we can expect from week 2.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

I don’t think anybody expected Donald Trump’s criminal trial to go normally, but I also don’t think anybody, no matter how much legal or political experience they’ve had, nobody could have predicted how insane the first week was going to be. And yeah, it was insane. Capped off, of course, on Friday at 1:30 PM Eastern, when a man who apparently was a Trump supporter, lit himself on fire outside of the courtroom and also distributed a bunch of pieces of paper filled with conspiracy theories. Now that man, of course, was announced on Saturday over the weekend that he did die from his injuries. But he set himself on fire and was on fire outside of the courtroom, caught on live tv. He burned for more than two minutes, which, absolutely like, there’s no words to even describe that, but that’s what capped off the week.

And even before that, things were absolutely bonkers inside and outside of that courtroom. Now, what we had all last week was just jury selection. Okay. This should have been the easiest part. This should have been the most drama free. Let’s just find people and then we get going. That’s when the fireworks should have started. But on Friday before the man set himself on fire outside the courtroom, jurors were crying in the courtroom as they had to tell the judge and the Trump himself, like the details of their life. Some were excused because they said they were just experiencing so much anxiety. We had the media doxing these people all week, not just Fox News, ABC News, Politico, all sorts of outlets releasing every detail about these people’s lives. So some of those folks were able to get excused because of what was happening to them in the media.

We had Donald Trump and his repeated gag order violations inside and outside the courtroom. There is a hearing on that tomorrow, by the way. So, you know, pay attention to that. It’s gonna be a very eventful day. But the jurors feel threatened. At one point, Trump got in trouble with the judge for muttering about one of the prospective jurors while they were talking, the judge stopped and yelled at Donald Trump and said, I’m not gonna have this happening in my courtroom. We have Donald Trump dozing off multiple times. Just absolutely nothing, nothing that anyone could have expected. Sure, the Trump gag order violations, everybody knew that was gonna happen, but the rest of it, just absolutely insane. Not to mention just other weird things happening, including the heating system in the courtroom malfunctioning. So everybody in the court is just freezing cold. Which, okay, that’s not that big of a deal, but it just kind of adds on as like, just another thing that is super weird about what’s happening. Legal experts, of course, have admitted to just being baffled by all of this.

Like, they’ve never seen anything like that. And again, that was just week one. Just week one. And it was just jury selection. Okay. We weren’t hearing actual arguments. But week two is beginning of course. Tomorrow, Donald Trump has his hearing on the gag order violations. That could go very negatively for him. The prosecution at this point is only asking for a fine of $3,000. But given the number of violations Trump has had now, more than a dozen in the last week since the trial began, I don’t know that the judge is gonna go, yeah, just give us three grand and everything’s okay. It would not surprise me if the judge came down with a much harsher punishment, but I do not think jail time at this point is in the cards for Donald Trump. Obviously, this is the first time the judge is going to address it, so it’s probably not gonna be the harshest of punishments. But if it happens again, I guarantee you it will be. So that’s how the first week went, worse and weirder than anyone could have expected, and buckle up, because week two has already started.

Farron Cousins is the executive editor of The Trial Lawyer magazine and a contributing writer at DeSmogBlog.com. He is the co-host / guest host for Ring of Fire Radio. His writings have appeared on Alternet, Truthout, and The Huffington Post. Farron received his bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of West Florida in 2005 and became a member of American MENSA in 2009. Follow him on Twitter @farronbalanced