A silent Trump glowers and stares during third day of criminal trial

This was not Donald Trump the business mogul or Donald Trump the 45th president – it was Donald Trump the defendant

With Donald Trump just a few feet away, a potential juror in the criminal case against him summed up the experience in just three words. “This is bizarre,” she said, with just a slight hint of a seasoned New York accent.

Bizarre it was. There was a potential juror who once spent the night at one of Trump’s lawyers’ homes more than a decade ago (Trump’s team used one of its pre-emptory strikes to remove the juror). The microphones didn’t work. The proceedings had to start over when Judge Juan Merchan realized that a court reporter hadn’t been present first thing. And the temperature in the courthouse was so frigid that Todd Blanche, one of Trump’s lawyers, asked Merchan if it would be possible to turn up the temperature “just one degree”.