And the white house. That is the show for this evening. Now it is time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Alex, ben rhodes and jen psaki, i could listen to them going on and on. Keep them running through the top of the hour. At this table tonight, all four of us were at the courthouse today, in the courtroom, listening to the judge who may have had the most important stuff to say today and of course, Stormy Daniels had a lot to say today. She sure did. I will be watching. Have a good show. Tonight we begin at the end, because this time the end tells you everything you need to know. About what came before that in the courtroom today, where donald trump was called the orange turd repeatedly by Stormy Daniels and by his own lawyer. Thats right, that is how Donald Trumps day went today. The woman he has paid more money to than any woman he has not married, criminal defense attorney necheles, repeatedly called her client, donald trump, the orange necheles he, on what she thought was an effective crossexamination of Stormy Daniels. Imagine donald trump sitting in the courtroom, slumped in his chair, leaving his eyes closed for long stretches, being forced to listen with eyes closed or eyes open, to one of his Criminal Defense Lawyers on whom he has lavished money, money provided listen to her repeatedly call him the orange turd. Donald trump is of course the most Banal Human Being who has ever entered the courthouse, but his colossal vanity combined with his even more colossal stupidity leaves us unable to tell what he was experiencing. A normal person couldnt be more humiliated. Donald trump, was that the first time he heard himself referred to as the orange turd . His lawyer was doing what he ordered her to do, which was keep Stormy Daniels on the Witness Stand as long as possible in the trump belief that simply minutes on the Witness Stand count as somehow scoring points against Stormy Daniels. The orange turd landed an hour into a belabored Cross Examination by Susan Necheles that was repetitive, tedious, and almost entirely irrelevant. At 10 20 a. M. , highpriced lawyer Susan Necheles said to Stormy Daniels, quote, isnt it a fact that you keep posting on social media how youre going to be instrumental in putting President Trump in jail . Answer. Show me where i said i would be instrumental in putting President Trump in jail. All right. If we could show the witness j 43 please. Do you recognize that as your post . Answer, yes. Question, and i dont see the word instrumental or jail. Blow it up a little bit more. Susan necheles then shows the post on all of the screens in the courtroom for the jurors to see and the spectators to see and for donald trump to see and then she says, quote, you were responding to the post, someone elses post there . Answer, yes. Someone calling me a human toilet, so i capitalized on the joke. Question, the other post. Michael cohen and Stormy Daniels, a. K. A. The human toilet, are the star witnesses, right . Answer, yes. You said, exactly, making me the best person to flush the orange turd down. Answer, yes. So, Susan Necheles brought the orange turd into the courtroom and kept it there. The questioning about the orange turd went on and on. Stormy daniels said, quote, i dont see instrumental or jail there. Youre putting words in my mouth. Question, so when you said you were the best person to flush the orange turd down, you werent saying you were going to be instrumental in causing him to be convicted of a crime . That is not what you meant . Answer, no. Question, what does that mean . Answer, im pretty sure this is hyperbole. If somebody calls me a toilet, i can say flush somebody. See how that works . Now trying to explain a joke to a lawyer in court is always pointless. Question, you said you were going to flush President Trump . Answer, i didnt say President Trump. It says orange turd, so if thats whats interpreted by you question, what do you mean . Answer, i dont know what i mean. Question, you have no idea. Answer, im also not a toilet. Im asking you whether you knew what you meant when you said and orange turd . Answer, yes i do. Question, what did you mean . Answer, i meant im not a human toilet, so if they want to make fun of me, i can make fun of them. Question, you dont want to admit you meant mr. Trump . Answer, i absolutely meant mr. Trump. Question, why did you say no . Answer, it doesnt say instrumental and putting him in jail. So it went with Susan Necheles repeatedly pretending to quote things that she was not quoting and getting caught by the witness, Stormy Daniels, who then proved that Susan Necheles had mischaracterized what she was presenting to Stormy Daniels and Stormy Daniels did not spend one minute in law School Learning how to do that. That is a sample of what happened in the morning. But as i said, the most important part of the day by far was the end. That is when judge merchan got the last word and provided the most important possible review of Stormy Daniels performance on the Witness Stand, as did the Trump Lawyers. Stormy daniels left the Witness Stand that 12 23 p. M. , two hours after Susan Necheles invited her to repeatedly call donald trump the orange turd to his face in the courtroom. Three more, far less colorful witnesses then took the Witness Stand and judge merchan into testimony early today at 4 00 p. M. So the Trump Defense could have time to raise two motions, both of which were raised and denied by the judge. First, criminal defense attorney todd blanche who is the lead attorney in this case and has already been so thoroughly humiliated in that very courtroom, that he enters, exits, and spends the day at the Defense Table looking like the saddest man in the room every day. Todd blanche argued a motion to the judge to rewrite his gag order on donald trump to now exclude Stormy Daniels from the gag order so that donald trump can tweet about her. Do whatever he does on truth social. Todd blanche insisted the Stormy Daniels presented what he called a completely different version of events. Donald trump should be free to respond to that new version of events. The judge said for example, what todd blanche thought was a different series of events. Quote, i felt the room spin in slow motion and a few other lines to which the judge said i dont see a new set of facts. The District Attorney argued that the additional elements were not inconsistent with her previous statements. Judge merchan explained why he would not change the gag order. Quote, my concern is not just with protecting ms. Daniels or a witness who already testified. My concern is protecting the integrity of these proceedings as a whole. That means everybody sees what happens. Witnesses who have not yet testified well see what happens. They will see how witnesses who have testified are going to be treated by your client and i cant take your word for it that this is going to be low key. This is not going to be an attack. This is just going to be a response to what was said because that is not the track record. The reason why the gag order is in place to begin with is precisely because of the nature of these attacks. These were very real, very threatening attacks on potential witnesses, so the track record, your clients track record, speaks for itself. I cant take your word for it, that he will just say hey, i dispute the facts. So with regard to your application to modify the gag order to allow your client to respond to ms. Daniels, that application is denied. Then judge merchan listened to blanches motion for a mistrial, based on how devastating Stormy Daniels testimony was to donald trump. Todd blanche called Stormy Daniels testimony about what happened in the hotel room, quote, a completely made up encounter with donald trump and todd blanche complained plaintively, as close to tears as any man in that room has come, to the spanking. Quote, and then questioned about President Trump spanking, being asked to be spanked during the incident again, how that is relevant to why we are here, especially when you weigh it and compare it to the prejudicial nature of that sort of testimony. A series of questions about rolling up a magazine and spanking him. The designated family spectator supporter, eric trump, did not show up today. So there were no Family Members sitting with us in that Courtroom Listening to all of the legal talk about donald trump. Being spanked by Stormy Daniels. Todd blanche insisted that, quote, this is not a case about sex. There should not have been any testimony at all about sex, including the moment Stormy Daniels described right before. Todd blanche quoted Stormy Daniels testimony to the judge. She says, i went to step around. I laughed nervously. Tried to make a joke out of it and to step around to leave. Even though i was moving like i was in a fun house, like slow motion. I thought to myself, great. I put myself in this bad situation. Like, what did i do . How did i misread everything . He stood up between me and the door, not in a threatening manner. He didnt come at me. He didnt rush at me. He didnt put his hands on me or nothing like that. I said, i got to go. He said, i thought we were getting somewhere. We were talking. I thought you were serious about what you wanted, if you ever want to get out of that trailer park. Again, this is an extremely prejudicial statement by a witness that was never said. There is no evidence that that was said to ami. There was no evidence that that was said to cohen. There was no evidence that that had anything to do with the motive of anybody involved in this case to enter into that nda in 2016. Prosecutor steinglass had an answer. Blanche says she never said any of this in 2016. She did not speak to cohen or ami in 2016, but you know who know what happened in that room . Mr. Trump new. Those details of what happened in that room, those messy details, that is motive. That was mr. Trumps motive to silence this woman before she could tell her story in 2016, less than a month before the election. So this is not irrelevant. Mr. Trump was aware of those details and the fact that testimony is prejudicial and messy, according to blanche, that is why mr. Trump tried so hard to prevent the American People from hearing about this. The prosecutor told the judge about Additional Details of the sexual encounter that Stormy Daniels revealed in her interview with the District Attorneys office. The District Attorney deliberately did not use those details in Stormy Daniels testimony because the District Attorney knew the judge wanted to minimize the details of the sexual encounter in the testimony. Here is an example of what the prosecutor deliberately left out of Stormy Daniels courtroom testimony. Quote, at one point ms. Daniels was asked, you know, did you feel anything unusual . Now the answer to that question was going to be, i felt what it felt like to feel the skin of a 60yearold man. I was 27 years old and that was different than anything i had ever felt before. Now thats the kind of detail that would corroborate her account of having a sexual interaction with the defendant, but was not elicited. Your honor sustained the objection. There are other details that i dont want to put on the record. The prosecutor said that the defense can offer evidence that nothing sexual happened in that room, simply by putting donald trump on the Witness Stand where he can say anything he wants about Stormy Daniels. There is no gag order on the Witness Stand. Todd blanche was outraged that Stormy Daniels testified that donald trump did not use a condom. The prosecutors response to that was that donald trump asked a lot of questions about the testing in the adult film industry. How often the testing happens, whether performers were required to wear condoms, et cetera, questions about that. The reason that is relevant is because it explains his decision to not wear a condom and the fact that that testimony comes out is because the description of the conversation that she had with mr. Trump, again, corroborates her story. Todd blanche asked to speak again very briefly after the prosecutor completed his argument. Very briefly, the court, very briefly. I mean, judge, what they are saying is not true. For example the people just told you that ms. Mcdougall was not on the witness list. Im not going to get bogged down on that. But judge, it is not relevant to this motion. That is why i am saying, very quickly, whether she was going to be called has nothing to do with this motion for a mistrial. But it does, your honor. The court, no it doesnt. I am making the ruling and i decide whether it does or it doesnt. Im telling you it doesnt. Now it is so difficult to convey how angrily and brusquely judge merchan treated todd blanche in that courtroom. It was something we have not seen in that courtroom before, because judge merchan is normally a mild voice. A calm speaker in court to make shoe lean forward to hear him and you always do. Because he is so clear. So simply raising his decibel level slightly and the quickness and intensity of his speech, slightly, as he did, has an enormous effect in that room. It is bombastic in its way. Judge merchan plays his role in such an understated way that when he leans into anything, it lands like an explosion, as it did today. So, judge merchan, after ordering todd blanche to sit down again, launched into his decision on the mistrial, saying that he agreed that the mention of the condom should not have come out and what he did not understand was why Donald Trumps highpriced criminal defense lawyer, specifically Susan Necheles, did not object. The judge said i wished those questions hadnt been asked and i wish those answers hadnt been given, but for the life of me i dont know why ms. Necheles did not object. She made about 10 objections, most of which were sustained. Why on earth she would not object to the mention of a condom i dont understand. And so it went for most of the issues raised by todd blanche. But the crushing blow to the motion and to todd blanches work as a lawyer in this case came when the judge explained to him with donald trump sitting there listening, that todd blanche lost this motion for a mistrial with the very first thing he said in this trial on the first day. Judge merchan. Mr. Blanche in your Opening Statement your denial puts the jury in a position of having to choose who they believe. Donald trump, who denies there was an encounter, or Stormy Daniels who claims there was. Although the people do not have to prove that a sexual encounter did occur, they have the right to rehabilitate her credibility and story which was immediately attacked on Opening Statements. The more specificity ms. Daniels can provide about the encounter, the more the jury can way to determine whether the encounter did occur and if so whether they choose to credit ms. Daniels story. Judge merchan pointed out that he himself objected on behalf of the Trump Lawyers and incidents where they failed to object and on his own they stopped lines of questioning. Judge merchan explained that Stormy Daniels explained in her interview with the District Attorney that seeing the movie, bombshell, made her review her own thoughts and feelings about what happened in that room with donald trump. The movie, bombshell, was a brilliant film starring charlize theron, margot robbie, john lithgow, and the horror story of roger ailes sexual harassment, Sexual Assault and rape of women at fox news while running that poisoned workplace. The judge said, quote, ms. Daniels watched this movie years later and it was at that point that certain memories came back and certain explanations came back to her for her feelings. I ruled immediately that that could not come in. I felt that somehow to inject roger ailes into the proceedings would be unduly prejudicial to your client and i did so, even though these feelings of the numb hands, the room spinning, the blacking out, went unexplained and i did that to protect your client. I disagree with your narrative that there is any new account. I disagree that there is any change in story. What happened is people have gone into more detail than they origina