Im not sure that anybody has ever seen anything like this before. Day two of testimony in trumps hush money election interference trial. And the judge has already had it with trump and his legal team. Meanwhile, i was in the courtroom as the first witness, david pecker, gave riveting testimony about his interactions with trump. I will tell you what i saw and heard. And that is where we begin tonight. With the historic first ever trial of a former american president , as donald trump spent a second day in court before a attan jury. It was a day that i can say i witnessed personally as i took my turn to be at the courthouse, and has been the case so far, there were no throngs of Trump Supporters outside raising hell on his behalf. We notice this one guy who had a crucifix and rang a loud bell while wearing a tshirt declaring the three greatest u. S. President s were george washington, john f. Kennedy, and donald trump. Other than that, for all the giant barricades erected downtown, the largest numbers present were Police Officers and reporters plus a couple adorable middle schoolers who came down to see the events. Inside the courthouse, i started as Team Overflow room and through the endless grace of lisa reuben moved to the main courtroom for the second half of the day. While i have written a book about donald trump called the man who sold america for which i interviewed many a trump person and former campaign staffer, et cetera, today was the first time i have actually been in the same room with donald trump. The tormentor of black teenagers like myself in the late 1980s when the Central Park Trial took place in the very same courthouse. What i can tell you is hes taller than you might expect and walks in a gait that is shufflier than you would think. And hes definitely a scowler. Although who wouldnt be scowling facing 34 criminal counts in a case that could in theory send you to prison. I can also confirm he has a strangely orange hue, although lighter orange now that hes out of the florida sun and away from the tanning beds, and whoever does his hair masked the thinning in the back and on top with deft cantilevering. But how today started was not so much about donald trump the man as it was about donald trump the obsessive, repeated social media user. The first two hours of the day, without the jury present, was a battle between trumps lead defense attorney, todd blanche, and judge juan merchan, About Whether Trump had on ten separate occasions violated an april 1st gag order. By posting and reposting about potential witnesses in this case, including Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels and even former new york prosecutor mark pomeranz, who apparently trump wants to see jailed. The posts including amplifying comments from Michael Avenatti who you might remember represented Stormy Daniels before she fired him for apparently stealing from her and other clients. Something for which he remains in prison, though he somehow is also still doing interviews. And also for amplifying this segment on fox, attacking the jurors in this case on april 17th. They are trying to rig this jury. They are catching undercover liberal activists lying to the judge. Yeah, no, theyre not. Judge merchan proceeded to scold todd blanche for not being able to explain to him how trumps posts were responses to political attacks. Its like watching the kid who didnt do his homework get owned by the college professor. When it was over, todd blanche was moved to second chair. It was on to business, part two of the questioning of david pecker. Pecker, who owned American Media inc. In the early 90s was a smooth talking Silver Haired man who seems to have almost idolized donald trump. He described him as someone americans respected as the boss on the apprentice, which was also the way Michael Cohen referred to trump. Pecker said the trump covers were consistently the National Enquirers best seller. The other covers that sold a lot of enquirer magazines on the Supermarket News stands, covers featuring stories about bill clintons womanizing and Hillary Clinton enabling him. Making the deal with Michael Cohen, something he says happened in august 2015 with cohen and then Campaign Communications director hope hicks in the room, was a winwin. The enquirer would publish negative stories about trumps opponents which they did repeatedly, particularly when ben carson, ted cruz, and marco rubio started rising in the polls in the spring of 2016. At the same time, running positive stories featuring donald trump as the ideal next president of the united states, which they also did throughout that year. Pecker was personally invited by cohen to trumps president ial announcement in trump tower. And he hoped to financially benefit from how many magazines the protrump and antitrump competitor issues would sell. A total winwin. He also testified that once trump announced his president ial bid, that he was in constant communication with Michael Cohen, as pecker and a small group of ami editors kept their eyes and ears pealed for stories that could be damaging to trump so they could catch them and kill them before they were published anywhere else. At least before the election. And one by one, the prosecutor walked david pecker through the deals that they cut with dino sajudin, the doorman who claimed to have information about a trump love child with his hispanic former housekeeper, which pecker paid 30,000 for, despite his team vetting it and determining it was 1,percent untrue. Yet, they signed a deal with mr. Sajudin that included a 1 million penalty for breaking it. Which they let sajudin out of in december 2016. After the election. The day ended on the deal ami cut with playboy model Karen Mcdougal, who got 150,000 after pitching a story of her own. A yearlong affair with trump, which she alleges and he denies. Today, absolutely felt like a day to set up cohens own testimony and to make the point which they did with exhibits on the big screens in the courtroom that what pecker is bringing to the table is not just stories about his favorite tabloid cover subject but also physical receipts. And its only just the beginning, as the prosecution hasnt even gotten to the Stormy Daniels part of the story yet. Joining me is neal katyal, Former Acting Solicitor General and msnbc analyst. Katie phang, Trial Attorney and host of the Katie Phang Show right here on msnbc, who was at the courtroom with me today. And brian stelter, vanity fair Special Correspondent and author of the book of network lies. Thank you all for being here. Because you are at a disadvantage, our friend neal, im going to go to you first. What were you impressions today . First, i want to say katies coverage of the trial live has been so spectacular. And its really criminal that the American Public cant see it for themselves. Katie is the next best thing. And i just have to really, my hat is off to her for translating all of the antics in the courtroom and everything. To me, the big headline is the loss of credibility that trumps lawyer todd blanche had when he was trying to defend what donald trump was doing with his gag order. The gag order forbids trump from commenting on jurors or perspective jurors. Trump clearly violated it, so what did his lawyer todd blanche do . Deny everything. And deny everything so much so that the judge said, you have broken your reputation with me. And credibility is the currency, joy, of lawyers, as katie knows. A judge should only look at the facts and law in the case, not a defendants wealth or status. The lawyers, the key part of persuasion in that. This is all foreign to donald trump who traded in power and status his whole life, but when his lawyer has lost credibility with the court, thats a very serious statement that doesnt bode well for trumps legal team, bodes very poorly for donald trump because lawyers are like nuclear weapons. If one side has a good one, the other side has to get one. There are a couple lawyers on the jury, too. I want to cosign what neal said about you, katie phang. Youre an exquisite attorney and have been doing a fantastic job of translating this madness on air. We were buddies today in Team Overflow. Tell me, because it was an interesting sort of you were telling me the names, making sure i knew who everybody was. It was interesting when he seemed to do such a bad job, todd blanche actually got moved out of the first chair. He was really convening with trump, and it wasnt happy if trump was happy. To neals point, it is such a tragedy the American People cant see the dynamic inside there, but more specifically at counsels table for donald trump. The level of disinteresting, the inattention, the perhaps sleeping going on. Things like this, hes not even looking at his lawyer when his lawyer is making arguments about his violating a gag order that could put him in yale. Wouldnt you have interest if you might be looking at incarceration for 30 days. Susan necklace who is according to everybody, people have known her for decades, shes a true criminal defense lawyer, in the sense of she really believes everybody deserves a defense. But she parks herself the furthest away physically from donald trump. Its almost like she wants to be as far removed she was leaning away from him. So for todd blanche to try to reestablish, hugo talked about this last hour, this kind of buddy buddy kind of energy with donald trump, i thought that was very telling because it was sheer humiliation. I mean, blanche had nothing left to say. And its one thing to be its one thing for the judge to admonish you if youre in your zealousness to represent, you argue too far, but whats was humiliating, he had no evidence, no defense. No argument. No arguments. That is the problem when youre a lawyer. Youre representing a client who is looking at 34 felonies and you have no evidence to refute it, and you take an position that is hidockulous. Judge merchan said, oh, it suddenly appeared . I feel like when this is your alamo, you want to die on this hill as a lawyer . It doesnt make sense. But luckily, in some ways it didnt happen in front of the jury. Because jurors sometimes can feel badly for lawyers. Sometimes katie was starting to say, he really looked pathetic and fidgety and uncomfortable. He didnt seem comfortable in hiskin today at all. Jurors can feel badly about this lawyer getting yelled at by the judge. The other good way, it sets a tone that merchan is not taking it. Merchan really comes across as just this very gentile, kind professor who is over it because you didnt do your homework. Lets talk, i want to talk about david pecker a little bit. Im going to call on your media expertise. He did a thing that they dont even normally do in Checkbook Journalism as he called it. Buying really juicy stories and then not publishing them. And he even said in court, which i found kind of stunning, with the Karen Mcdougal story, they were like, lets buy it. We want to use it, just after the election. We want to even use the story about the guy who claims theres an illegitimate son. They just didnt want to use it until after the election. He seemed to help that part of the case. This idea of Checkbook Journalism, its a contradiction. There are no checkbooks in real journalism. Were not out there paying for stories in the real journalism world. But its specifically because donald trump cant exist in a real journalism world. He doesnt want pesky fact checkers, people telling him hes lying. Hes creating this alternative media universe. The enquirer was the key example in 2015 and 2016. He created, built up with his friend david pecker This Alternative System to get out his news to his voters. Were seeing it be dissected now in real time in this trial. This idea of friends of pecker, fops, a friend of pecker, so trump gets a free ride. It is nothing to do with journalism. In fact, david pecker is revealing himself not to be a news man. Hes an advertiser, a marketering, and his product was donald trump. When he gave him something about an estimate of 3 million a month of free advertising. He created a magazine that was a quarterly magazine thats literally just about donald trump. He was talking about it in these weird reverential terms. He was asked what can you do to help the campaign . Hes oh, i know what i can do. Were going to find all these negative stories. Your, quote, eyes and ears. And Michael Cohen was the go between. To your point, this is setting up the cohen testimony. How is that a crime . Thats what the prosecutor has to prove. Catch and kill is unseemly, gross, but its not illegal. Thats why the new york statute that was previewed previously in the motions that were dealt with prior to this case surviving the motions to dismiss, because you know, this is important. Trials dont just materialize overnight. There was litigation. There was Motion Practice that happened that this indictment survived because a lot of people want to say theres nothing here. Theres no there there. Donald trump whipping out like a toddler, look at all of my friends saying theres no crime here. Well, Jonathan Turley is not the Gold Standard for that. So what happened is when you heard the testimony through pecker that there was a conspiracy, and the conspiracy existed with the defendant and Michael Cohen, and now david pecker, and you heard that the purpose of all of these catch and kill were to insure there was going to be nothing that was put out that was going to be negative or negatively impacting that campaign, that is a crime in new york. Its not the nondisclosures, to your point. Its the actual trying to influence it. Its what are you trying to conceal . What are you trying to hide . And that is exactly what theyre trying to hide. This relationship is cozier than i knew. I reported on the enquirer ten years ago, but im learning new details. Theres new information about just how cozy it was. And neal, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but Ami Made A Nonprosecution deal in 2018 in which they explicitly admitted what they did was a crime. They admitted they knew they were breaking Campaign Finance laws, they knew there was a limit on Campaign Contributions and they exploded through it. If he admitted to a crime, and Michael Cohen was convicted of a crime, kind of hard to say the only person who didnt commit a crime here is trump. Thats exactly right, joy. And like what the testimony today underscores, the same thing as that 2018 plea deal. Like ami and the National Enquirer where journalistic integrity goes to die basically. Thats not always a crime. If youre not running for president , like trump was paying the National Enquirer perhaps to squelch stories about his girlfriend when he wasnt running, thats one thing. If youre running for the presidency of the united states, you do so against a backdrop of a whole series of laws passed to insure that the American Voters have transparency in the process. You cant get secret in kind Campaign Contributions. I mean, imagine if joe biden had the Washington Post basically buying up all the stories about his son and under biden so they could never be run, catching and killing them. Obviously, we would all be up in arms the same way as the new York District attorney is here. And transparency really demands this prosecution. I dont think that the d. A. Had a choice at this point when you have someone who is spitting on our Campaign Finance laws. You know, what that says to me, brian, all of the reasons that donald trump was so much better off not running for president , because he could have kept doing a lot of the gross, unseemly things that he likes to do, and none of it would have necessarily run him up against the law. Because he could have done these catch and kills, but doing it for a campaign is where he messed up. And david pecker would be better off as well. Everyone he knows. David pecker loved his life. His proximity to power. Doing favors for his friends, punishing his enemies, putting nasty pictures of Hillary Clinton on the front of his magazine. Hes lost the enquirer. Hes now testifying against his longtime buddy. We anyhow how this is getting to donald trump . The lies hes telling today about the crowds outside. I was on the outside in the park today. How big . I saw two orthree trump fans. Tonight on truth social, trump said thousands are being turned away from the armed camp. Hes telling you not to believe your own eyes and ears. Its so telling that hes obsessed with this protester, lack of protester that hes claiming he has lots of fans who want to be there. Theyre just not allowed into the park. They cant get on the subways, buses, trains. I saw that empty park when we walked in. A Beautiful Day in manhattan. People are out walking their dogs. The Bell Ringer Guy was there. And he was passionate. Hell be back tomorrow and thursday. More cowbell. Brian stelter, thank you very much. Neal and katie are sticking around for much more on day two of testimony in trumps hush money trial,