One was a beheading meme. One of them was an AI music video called “Dumb As Fuck Trump.” Another video was a 2016 video in which Mark Ruffalo promised to “do a nude scene” in his next movie.
Five potential jurors have been shown the door so far from Donald Trump’s secret trial after his lawyers complained about these and other “anti-Trump” social media posts.
Many of the messages were quite comical when described in open court. There was even humor in what was not described.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said when defense attorney Todd Blanche proposed playing on the “Dumb As Fuck Trump” video.
Trump, who had dozed off at the defense table earlier in the day, was often the only one not laughing.
In fact, he was chastised by the judge for being obviously angry after being forced to watch a prospective juror’s video of New Yorkers dancing in the street when he lost the 2020 presidential election.
Seven jurors — four men and three women — were chosen. Jury selection continues Thursday.
Here, in chronological order, is what happened in court Tuesday as the defense challenged the social media backgrounds of five potential jurors.
1. “To spread the joy of honking horns”
“So I hear what sounds like a cow bell,” Merchan, the judge, noted while listening to a video made four years ago by a high school teacher and mother of two.
She was the first of the prospective jurors to be questioned Tuesday by Trump’s defense team on their “anti-Trump” social networks.
His Facebook video showed Manhattanites laughing, clapping and dancing in the streets after Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory.
Trump had to sit at the defense table and watch the video be played in court, bells and all.
The potential juror, identified only as “B-133,” had clearly “attended an ‘anti-Trump rally,'” defense attorney Susan Necheles protested.
“This is not a gathering,” retorted prosecutor Joshua Steinglass.
“It looked like a New York party moment,” the high school teacher stammered when summoned to court to explain the video.
“I mean, I think that was it, I think,” she added.
Watching New Yorkers cheer in the streets after his defeat appears to have angered Trump.
“So, Mr. Blanche,” the judge told Trump’s lawyer, after the prospective juror left the courtroom.
“While the juror was at the podium, maybe 12 feet away from your client, your client was audibly saying something – I don’t know exactly what he was saying,” the judge warned.
“I will not tolerate this. I will not let any juror be intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that very clear.”
2. “Bring him out and lock him up”
Then there were the social media posts from the juror they called “B-38,” a middle-aged man from Midtown who works as a creative director for Lands’ End.
“Good news,” he posted on Facebook in 2017, shortly after Trump took office. “Trump lost his legal battle and his illegal travel ban.”
In another post from around the same time, he posted: “Get him out and lock him up” and “Be careful of DJT’s stupid tweets.”
“We can’t have a juror like that on the jury, your honor,” Blanche told the judge, reasonably enough.
Summoned before the judge, the prospective juror admitted: “I had very strong feelings at that moment.”
“This is a person who expressed, at least at one point several years ago, a desire that Donald Trump be incarcerated,” the judge later explained of his decision to exclude B-38 from the jury.
“Everyone knows that if Mr. Trump is convicted in this case, he faces a potential prison sentence, which would be ‘imprisonment’.”
3. “And get Mark Ruffalo naked”
Eight years ago, celebrities including Robert Downey Jr., Neil Patrick Harris and Ruffalo banded together for a video called “The Avengers Unite Against Donald Trump…and to Get Mark Ruffalo Naked.”
Ruffalo reluctantly promises in the clip to “do a nude scene” in his next movie if people come out and vote.
“They should just vote because it’s important, you know? Don’t you think?” protests the star in the clip.
When it was released in 2016, the clip was shared on the Facebook account of the husband of future juror B-330.
Not the potential juror’s Facebook, mind you. The information was shared on the future juror’s husband’s Facebook account.
The husband also posted a meme in 2016 showing Trump and then-President Barack Obama side by side. The caption read: “I don’t think that’s what they meant by ‘orange is the new black’.”
And finally, the husband had posted, still in 2016, “just a meme of a character holding President Trump’s head in his hands,” Blanche complained. The head, he said, was cut off.
“I guess it’s a character from The Simpsons,” the judge offered sullenly.
“Yes, your honor,” Blanche replied.
“What is this character’s name?” » asked the judge.
“I don’t know,” Blanche replied.
“I don’t know either,” the judge said.
Steinglass, the prosecutor, complained that the posts were from 2016 and had not been posted by the prospective juror herself, a young woman who works for the city’s Economic Development Corporation.
It was clearly “political humor,” he added.
The judge was not impressed.
“Honestly,” he told the defense, “if that’s the worst thing you could find in this juror – that her husband posted this humor, even though it wasn’t very good, eight years ago – so that gives me confidence that this juror can be fair and impartial.
4. “I’m stupid as fuck Trump.”
Last month — but long before he could imagine being a juror in the secrecy case — a middle-aged employee at the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore added a few pro-Biden posts to his Facebook account.
They included Biden-Harris campaign promos, a report titled “Trump indicted in documents case” and what Blanche described in complaint as “a one-minute, 30-second video, titled ‘I’m stupid, fuck Trump.
“It’s a parody video,” Blanche breathed about the AI-generated clip, “which makes fun of President Trump all the time.”
When the lawyer suggested, “We can play for your honor,” the judge declined.
“I honestly don’t remember,” the bookseller said when Blanche asked if he had watched the video. “I thought it would be funny. I don’t remember watching it.”
“Do you have a very unfavorable overall impression of Donald Trump,” prosecutor Steinglass asked.
“I should say that politically, yes, I do,” replied the prospective juror.
The judge let the defense evict the bookseller for cause.
5. “The boys ask to go back to the cave”
The last potential juror questioned about their social media posts was a retired grandmother from Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
In 2018, the bespectacled grandmother of four and former public transport worker posted a meme about the football team being rescued from a cave in Thailand.
“Trump invites Thai boys to the White House,” the meme read. “The boys ask to go back to the cave.”
“Republicans were planning to get 70 prison seats,” reads another meme from the Borowitz report, which the same woman also posted around the same time.
“That was six years ago,” the judge complained.
Summoned before the judge, the grandmother said that after 2018 she stopped posting “nothing to do with politics.”
“It became too vitriolic for people, people I’ve known for years,” she said.
“So yes, I may have posted this, but I learned a good lesson from it,” she added, provoking laughs and smiles in the courtroom – but not from Trump.
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