hello, i'm dana bash with wolf blitzer in washington. a historic courtroom clash. right now former president donald trump is testifying in his own defense in his new york civil fraud trial, and within minutes of trump taking the stand, a battle with the judge quickly unfolded. judge arthur engoron accused trump of making long-winded speeches, the judge told defense attorneys, i beseech you to control him, if you can. if you can't, i will. >> the former president of the united states is accused of inflating the value of his various properties by billions of dollars to acquire loan and insurance benefits, and the stakes for trump are high right now. he potentially could lose his certificate to do business in new york, and pay very hefty fines, in the millions and millions of dollars. cnn's kaitlan collins is just outside the courthouse, long with chief correspondent paula reid. paula, what are we hearing from trump's testimony so far today? has it been smoother this hour? >> reporter: much smoother, wolf, after a chaotic start. everyone took a break and it's clear that that gave everyone an opportunity to reassess their approach to today's proceedings, and what we've seen is that the judge has been the one who has most notably changed his approach. for that first hour, every time trump got off track, started pontificating, he would cut him off, which would set off interactions between trump's lawyers, the attorney general attorneys. it didn't allow for much progress in the hearing itself. so what we've seen since the break is that the judge is back in command of his courtroom, he is deferring, instead, to the attorney general's office with this questioning, saying that he is deferring to the questioner to allow trump to either ramble off script or give more precise answers. only one or two times have we seen the judge in the last hour instruct trump to be more focused and not to ramble, and just answer the question. so it has been a lot more productive for all the parties involved. it does not appear that trump has really changed his approach. he has taken shots at this case, at the judge, but overall this has been more productive, far more orderly than that chaotic first hour. >> i think the only reason it's been like that is not because of trump himself, it's because the judge is taking a very different approach. that's what's important here. that 15-minute break, nothing changed with how trump was treating this and how he was responding. instead, what we're seeing that's different is the judge himself not speaking up as much. as you noted, referring to the lawyer for the attorney general's office who is conducting this line of questioning, who has been pretty composed throughout this and has not gotten as frustrated with the rambling. i think part of that is because it potentially helps the attorney general's office, it may help them if he slips up and says something, instead of if he's just answering short yes or no questions. he said he was involved in the 2021 financial statements, and the lawyer pointed out quickly he was not president in 2021 and making that point as well. >> reporter: this has been much more focused on the substance of the case, on the backbone, questions that we anticipated, which are about valuations. i'm checking my phone because we're getting live updates from our colleagues inside the courtroom. it's interesting, though, trump was just asked a few moments ago about the valuations and one of the upsides of letting him just talk is, as you noted, the attorney general could get some answers that really help him. for example, he was asked about the valuation of one property and trump said, you can pretty much do whatever you want to do and describes it as being like a painting. that could be a problem, because as you know, when you are talking about your financial statements with an insurance company or a bank, you do have a legal obligation to be accurate, and that's what's at the heart of this case. so it has been interesting to see this change in strategy the second half of the morning, potentially allowing trump to talk could help the attorney general's case. >> the judge interpreted, he did finally speak up and say, what you're saying is irrelevant because he was being asked about the attorney general here and, essentially he was being asked about one of the allegations about a golf course in scotland and trump's answer was about how it's an oil capital, and that's why he believes the property value would be much higher. the judge did interrupt and said that's irrelevant to the question, just answer the question. there is still a hint of what we saw in the remarkable first hour of testimony where there was clearly such frustration between the judge and these attorneys. >> that's the only time -- one or two times we've seen the judge interrupt trump, cut him off. but such a turnabout from what we saw this morning. it's clear the judge took that break, reassessed his strategy, how it could potentially help the witness, maybe hurt the overall case, or especially on appeal, and he's taken a completely different tack in the last hour. >> something we're watching closely, continuing this line of questioning. this is the only day we do expect trump to testify. the court is closed tomorrow for election day. the judge has certainly taken a different approach than earlier when he was repeatedly so fed up with how trump was answering these questions. now he's saying i'm going to defer to the lawyer for the attorney general's office and how they're conducting this line of questioning. >> interesting. no cameras are allowed in this court today, so we can't be watching it live. we do have reporters inside briefing us repeatedly, very quickly, on what's going on inside. dana and kaitlan, we'll get back to you very soon. i want to discuss what's going on with laura coates right now, cnn's chief legal analyst. have you ever seen anything like this before? >> the idea that a former president is taking the stand in this way is very historic. but the idea of a bench trial where a judge is accustomed to the antics of defendants, not so abnormal. here is a different issue here. this is not a legal defense that trump is trying to put on. it is a political one. he would like to have the cameras in the courtroom because he wants to send a message of defiance and hopefully it will benefit him politically speaking in the long run. this judge is strategic. he knows full well there is bait that is being put out for him to take, hoping on an appeal they will say he was biased against him. in reality, what he's saying is i would like you to answer the questions. why? because i'm the fact finder. i have to hear your response, j judge it against the evidence presented by the prosecution, and decide something from that. the more he attempts to meander and grandstand, the less inclined the junl is to have an actual factual predicate to find in his favor. >> what's interesting about the point you just made is you're sort of describing a scenario in which this is a normal trial. [ laughter ] >> and i know normal is not the word we should use for any of this. but what i mean is that we have a couple of quotes from donald trump this morning to the judge, the first two that we have, one is he said, i'm sure the judge will rule against me because he always rules against me. and the second one, this is a very unfair trial. this is a very unfair trial, very, very, and i hope the public is watching. elliott, i spoke to somebody in trump's world about this going into today who made very clear that what we might see is an aggressive request for a mistrial. is it possible -- i don't know if we'll get it. but is it possible that the tact that the former president took this morning, these are two quotes that are examples, is going for just that? >> i rolled by eyes. he's not going to get a mistrial here. in order to get a mistrial, you have to have some egregious error from the court or jury, we don't have that here, that dep deprives the defendant to have a fair trial. he's baiting the judge into overstepping or doing something impermissible. there's a political strategy and a legal strategy. this is a political strategy playing to the folks in south carolina or nevada or wherever else, but not the judge. he could lose this trial on the basis of his conduct. there was a statement the judge made, i'm prepared to draw every negative inference against your testimony if you continue doing this because i can kick you out of this courtroom in a civil trial, and that may happen. he could lose the trial and lose $250 million. whether voters still vote for him is not the judge's concern. but it's important to separate out these two things that are happening. >> remember, by the way, taking a step back, he is arguing on the stand that he was not committing fraud. we're past that. the judge has already said in the summary judgment motion, you have fraudulent statements that were made in these financial statements. now the question is how expensive is it going to be for you to try to pay for that, whether you have your business license and beyond. they have six other counts, they're not going to put all their eggs in one basket. they're going to want to try to prove every single count. but you're talking oranges and apples, when the judge is saying i've already found against you. now convince me why you're not paying a quarter of a billion dollars. >> it's definitional for trump in so many ways, in the political sense, which is that he's strong, he fights back. this is what people like about him, he's a fighter, and he's also a victim who has been treated, you know, unfairly. in a legal sense and a personal sense, this is what's at stake here, something he has sold to the public and to himself about his own personal success as a businessman, and who he is and the way he identifies himself. it goes to his very core of who he is, and even back in 2016 he went out on the campaign trail and said, you know, i'm very rich and i'm a good businessman and i knew how to take advantage of the tax laws because i'm smart. and so he doesn't want anybody to show that he wasn't in total control of things, yet in order to prove his case he maybe should be doing what his sons did, which is to say, you know what, we didn't really pay attention to this. but he can't do that. he's having this internal struggle that we're watching. >> everybody stand by for a moment. i want to go back to kaitlan collins in new york outside the courthouse. i understand there's major developments unfolding. what are you learning? >> reporter: yeah, wolf, just as soon as we were talking about how things had kind of tamped down a bit when it comes to the temperature in the courtroom, that appears to have changed. now the former president is on the witness stand attacking the attorney general, letitia james who brought this case and is seated in that very courtroom. he is calling the investigation disgraceful, he is attacking her as a political hack. at one point, the judge was letting trump essentially continue with these answers because the lawyer for the ag's office was saying, i'm not going to strike that from the record, i'm going to let that stay in because they believe it could potentially be helpful to them. the judge laughed and said okay, and then he continued going on, launching this attack on the attorney general for even prosecuting him in the first place. so essentially it was just a few moments where there had been no attacks, per se, directly from the former president, he was just exaggerating about his properties, talking about why the values were what they were. now it has gotten back to where he is going after the judge and he is going after the attorney general. i think the question is how the judge is going to respond to that because he was quite frustrated with it earlier today. >> kaitlan, doesn't trump understand this isn't a jury trial? it's up to the judge to decide how many millions and millions of dollars he winds up paying and what happens to his business opportunities in new york, what happens to all those properties. why is he going after this judge so publicly and so angrily? >> reporter: it's certainly not what an attorney would typically suggest because it is the judge who is the decisionmaker here of how much in damages trump has to pay. but his attorneys have been sparring with the judge here in this case, last week they were going after the judge's law clerk, criticizing the communications between the two of them. trump himself has been fined by this judge $15,000 himself for going after that clerk. when he took the stand today he was certainly not trying to gain good favor with the judge. it was very quickly combative, with the judge being frustrated with how trump was answering these questions. the judge himself has noted that he is the decisionmaker here, and yet this is not something that trump seems to be arguing that point. i think part of that could be a strategy, that trump already knows that he has lost this case, basically, because the judge decided beforehand that he was liable for fraud. what we saw is them laying the ground for an appeal. trump is clearly potentially trying to provoke the judge here. the judge's frustrations have been made quite clear. that's a question of how it would look upon appeal and if the trump legal team would try to use that to their advantage. he's not trying to win the judge over, and is instead continuing with behavior that the judge is so clearly frustrated by. >> thank you so much. let us know when you hear more. jamie, that last point, and that's something we have to keep underscoring, laura, you said this before, that this is a civil trial and he's already effectively been found liable. he knows that's the case and he's playing for a potential mistrial, potential appeal, and overarchingly for the public. >> correct. donald trump knows how to behave in court. he has spent a lot of time in court. he knows better than this. and i think that's why the point of that he's already been found liable is so important. so what i think is going on in there is very much a political strategy, going back, dana, to the quote you had where he said it was so unfair, and then he said, quote, i hope the public is watching. >> exactly. >> there is no question that that's the court that he's playing to right now. he knows that his base -- and, by the way, voters in general talk to political strategists, they like politicians who attack, attack, attack. and now a couple of days ago he had this poll where he's looking very good. i think this is donald trump emboldened and that this is about politics today. >> well, you know, you're right, and i agree with you on why he's doing it strategically. but as mom always says, you can't always have your cake and eat it, too. the idea is you can on the one hand tell me you have control and run everything and you know every t that's crossed and every i that's dotted, and on the other hand tell me that you did not know what was on those forms was false and fraudulent and wanted someone to rely on those things. that's what eric and don jr. tried to do, no one is perceiving them as the head haunchos. there's been testimony from the former cfo, weisselberg, who said not only did i have misrepresentations, but they were shown to donald trump before they were handed over. >> this is also personal for him. i mean, this business has been his identity -- >> his identity has been on his business. >> exactly. and he said on the witness stand today, people don't know how good a company i built, and then he accused the state of trying to demean him. so this gives you a sense of, you know, i'm king of this hill, i was president of the united states and i should have been again, and, by the way, this company was all about me and i built it, never mind what his father gave him to start out, et cetera, et cetera. and so this is so personal for him in a way that i don't think he can -- it may be a strategy, but he's also not controllable when you talk about something that is so personal to him. he acts out. >> so, look, the facts are there, and there's plenty of data in the pleadings from the state attorney general about the valuations and the fraud and lies. it's all there if you live in a world of facts. but i think the winning argument goes back to james' point -- the argument that the team trump is trying to capitalize on is the public doesn't know the difference between the new york state attorney general, the new york d.a., the especially counsel, and they're making the argument that it's one big witch hunt. >> they're not just seeing it. it's a strategy by the former president and his political team to conflate all of them together. what we're watching is the civil fraud trial in new york, the new york attorney general is seeking $250 million in damages and to bar donald trump from doing business in new york. everybody stand by. we are going to talk more about the strategy from the trump camp, and also speak to one of his 2024 rivals, his former friend and adviser and former governor of new jersey, chris christie, ahead. we have new details coming in from trump's civil fraud trial in new york. he want to go back to cnn's kaitlan collins just outside the courthouse. it seems that trump is not letting up at all. >> reporter: no, things have gone downhill in just the last few moments inside the courtroom where trump has stopped answering questions from the attorney general's office and is launching attacks on the attorney general, letitia james, sitting in the front row. he is also attacking the judge here, arthur engoron, who is the decisionmaker in the damages trump is going to have to pay. we had a chaotic first hour, they took a 15-minute break, came back in the room, just to remind people, and then things seemed to be going pretty steady. the judge was not interrupting. now the judge is getting involved and telling trump that he's answering in irrelevant ways. what's notable is how the ag's office is continuing on with their line of question. after trump answered, the lawyer said, are you done, and trump said, i'm done. >> reporter: they clearly believe there is a benefit to letting him talk. it was remarkable to hear trump from the witness stand directly attack the attorney general. we have these quotes from our colleagues inside the courtroom. i'll read some of them. trump looked at the attorney general and said this is a political witch hunt and i think the attorney general should be ashamed of herself. he called her a political hack more than once, said, quote, i think she used this case to try to become governor, and she successfully used this case to become attorney general. he has accused her of political bias. she did, on the campaign trail, mention a desire to bring him to justice. he said, quote, on the stand, this is a political witch hunt and i think she should be ashamed of herself. he wasn't done. then he turned to the judge and noted that he had called him a fraud and didn't know anything about me. i believe he's referring to the fact that the judge has concluded that trump and his codefendants have submitted fraud and now they're focused on penalties. the judge shot back, he said, quote, read my opinion, perhaps for the first time. that's a little snarky for the judge, but so far the judge has been giving trump more leeway than the first half of the day. trump went on, he said to the judge, it's a terrible thing you've done. you believe this political hack, the attorney general, and that's unfortunate. kaitlan, this is remarkable, for trump to attack not only the attorney general, but also the judge who he is here today to convince not to impose maximum penalties. they had gotten more on track, they were moving along, answering questions. but here trump using