A dispatch from Donald Trump’s courtroom

Every trial involves two struggles, wrote Janet Malcolm, a shrewd observer of the American courtroom. One is engrossing, the other is stultifying, and both have been on full display at Donald Trump’s trial in a Manhattan courtroom in this past week.The first contest—the exciting one—is about the narrative itself. Who can tell it better: prosecutors or the defence? The are minor: they concern whether he falsified business records to conceal a payment to a porn star so that she would keep quiet about an old tryst. As a story, that lacks gravitas. So prosecutors, keen to inflate their case, claim it is really about “election fraud, pure and simple”, since the payment came on the eve of the 2016 presidential vote and denied information to voters. “Spoiler alert,” retorted Todd Blanche, Mr Trump’s lawyer. There was “nothing illegal” about the hush money; trying to influence an election is “called democracy”.