ON THE CAMPAIGN TRIAL

Trump is running for president while bumping into the past at a Manhattan criminal courthouse.

- Olivia Nuzzi

A NOTHER DAY IN PARADISE at the courthouse!" Jason Miller told me. A former aide to Rudy Giuliani, Miller was a Republican operative well known in New York and Washington, D.C., when he became a senior communications adviser on Trump's first presidential campaign. Since then, he has floated in and out of official roles with a stint in the middle at Gettr, a rival to Trump's own Truth Social. For the 2024 campaign, he holds the vague title of senior adviser; in practice, he is more like Trump's shadow, his status in the campaign hierarchy confirmed by his fixed proximity to the candidate. On this occasion, he was speaking from a holding room adjacent to the 15th-floor courtroom where Trump now spends most of his weekdays captive to the whims of a judge. From roughly 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, the court maintains custody of the candidate. On Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, the campaign gets custody of the defendant. Donald J. Trump for President 2024 has, by necessity, moved its operational headquarters from Palm Beach to the criminal court at 100 Centre Street.

While the area outside the courthouse has become an open-mic lounge for MAGA sycophants and Republican leaders who have determined they must convincingly mimic the behaviors of those political animals to survive in Trump's kingdom, the holding room is where Miller and other campaign officials monitor trial proceedings as they tend to the business of trying to install Trump back in the White House. "We can listen and watch what's going on, and we can do important things like call you back," Miller said in his perma-ironic lilt. "He's full time in the courtroom, and he's somehow full time on the campaign trail. We are maximizing every single minute the president has. If we can't be on the campaign trail, we'll bring the campaign trail to President Trump."

It's The Campaign Trial.