To get to the main point right up front: I believe that the gag order Judge Juan Merchan has imposed on Donald Trump during the contrived “hush money” trial is election interference to the core, and unconstitutional when applied to a Presidential candidate in an election year. The ACLU l declared another judge’s gag order on Trump as unconstitutional last fall, and you know what it takes to make the ACLU side with the “bad guys” in the 21st Century. Nonetheless, I believe any and all gag orders that could be enforced on Trump would benefit the nation, Trump supporters and Donald Trump himself.
If he could just keep his big trap shut and stop the ALL CAPS Truth Social posts he would breeze to victory. The man has no filters, wretched judgment, and the mastery of the English language of a Brooklyn street urchin on the autism spectrum. Who knows what he’ll say between now and November that will be either misreported as an admission of evil intent, or will in fact be so awful that it loses him millions of votes overnight?
He’ll blow it yet. A gag order is the best thing that could happen to him short of having his mouth eliminated, like when Charlie X was offended by laughing crew members in that old Star Trek episode…
Trump could keep his eyes and nose, though. I suppose.
I am more convinced of this than ever after reading Time’s interview with Trump….well, about half of it. His word clouds and stream of consciousness blather, not to mention his lack of discipline and usual factual carelessness gave me a splitting headache, and I just had to stop. Also nauseating was the interviewer’s determination to trap Trump in a “gotcha!”
A messy and undisciplined speaker is very likely to be a messy and undisciplined thinker. Listening to or reading Trump when he’s unscripted is terrifying to me: an American leader communicating in such fractured snippets of half-baked impulses and such imprecise language contradicts all of my research into the men who have held the office before him. How did this happen? In fact, how the HELL did this happen?
I know, I know….we’re here; it does no good to obsess over that now. This truth remains, however: the less Trump talks between now and the election, the less likely the country will have to survive another four years of Joe Biden and his totalitarianism-aspiring party.
The whole interview is here. Good luck.
Ethics Alarms 
I think Trump is trying to goad the judge into putting him in jail. To put the leading Presidential candidate in jail during an election campaign, by a judge who is a member of the opposing party, in a trial that can’t define a crime that was committed, would speak volumes about what the Democratic Party stands for. That would be the epitome of 3rd world dictatorship behavior.