Donald Trump has been called a lot of names in the first six days of his New York hush-money trial. "We will call him 'President Trump' out of respect for the office that he held from 2017 to 2021," Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told the jury Monday. "And as everybody knows, it’s the office he’s running for right now. He’s the Republican nominee." Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to receive it weekdays. Longtime tabloid publisher David Pecker, who testified that he conspired with Trump in 2015 and 2016 to "catch and kill" stories that could harm Trump's election effort, told the court that when they spoke, "I would call him Donald." Judge Juan Merchan greeted the former president Tuesday with a standard address for a defendant: "Good morning, Mr. Trump." That's also been the form favored by prosecutors. The what's-in-a-name question is just one of the unusual aspects of the first criminal trial of a former American president, but it points to tension points for Trump and his defense team. Blanche has a tough balancing act between the audience of one at the defense table and the audience of 12 in the jury box — and between Trump as the most powerful man in America at one time and as a common defendant now. Trump demands that his employees refer to him as "president," which is not uncommon for former presidents. But there are other reasons for Trump's lawyers to call him that. For one, his broader legal and public relations strategy for the more consequential federal charges facing him relies on an argument that he should be immune from prosecution for acts undertaken as president. And while the New York defense team would surely like for jurors to conclude that Trump was too powerful to be bothered by the details of how an aide was repaid for silencing a porn star, Blanche suggested he is cognizant of the risk that a jury could be alienated if the defendant seems to think he is above the peers assigned to judge him. After explaining why he would call Trump "the president," Blanche immediately sought to frame his client as a normal guy. "But — and this is important — he’s not just our former president. He’s not just Donald Trump that you’ve seen on TV and read about and seen photos of," Blanche said. "He’s also a man. He’s a husband. He’s a father. And he’s a person, just like you and just like me." Trump may be the most recognizable man on Earth. And yet the jurors will have to decide whether this Trump, by any other name, would be as guilty or not guilty.
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