Donald Trump’s first criminal trial will be both momentous and tawdry

Manhattanites once rolled their eyes at Donald Trump. Then they came to revile him. Soon 12 will decide if he is a felon. Jury selection in his first criminal trial, expected to last up to eight weeks in a shabby courtroom, has sped along; prosecutors will set out their case in a matter of days. One prospective juror confessed that the weight of the task at hand had kept her up at night: “This is, like, a big deal in the grand scheme of things.”Yes and no. Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has brought the first criminal indictment against a former president, who also happens to be running again. But the are low-level and the details tawdry. The case is about sex, money and blackmail. Mr Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who will testify against him, once described the conduct at issue as the “filth and muck of politics” and, less delicately, a “shit sandwich”.