OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A potential juror who was dismissed from Donald Trump’s hush money case in Manhattan on Tuesday described the “jarring” experience with the former president seated nearby as prosecutors and defense lawyers questioned her.
Jury selection for Trump’s hush money trial commenced on Monday in Manhattan. Kara McGee, who was dismissed after being screened for the potential jury pool, shared with MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard that she realized Trump was “just another guy” whose fate the jury could alter “forever.”
“What was that like answering questions, including some about Donald Trump, as he is sitting thirty feet from you?” Vaughn asked McGee.
“It was odd,” McGee said. “It was such an interesting experience because it’s — I had never seen him in person before, you know. And you, you see someone blown up so larger than life on the media for so many years, um — to see them in person is very jarring. Um, and, you get the sense that, ‘oh, this is just another guy.’ And also he sees me talking about him, which is bizarre.”
“Did you make eye contact with him?” the MSNBC News correspondent queried.
“Yes. Yeah,” she responded.
“At what point?” Vaughn asked. “When was that —”
“Uh, I believe right before I started to read off the questionnaire and right after I finished, before I got up to go when I was dismissed,” McGee said.
“Did it add another level of nervousness or tension that you felt with him sitting there?” Vaughn pressed.
“I think so,” McGee responded. “It, it made the whole thing feel more real in a way because I guess when you’re on any jury, you have elements of that person’s future in your hands. Um, so whether it was Trump, or whether it was some stranger off the street in Manhattan who I had never heard of before, um, if you commit to sitting on the jury — you can change that person’s life forever.”
At another point, McGee confessed that she was “not a fan” of the former president and appeared to blame him for the spreading of the COVID-19 virus.
“I’m not a fan,” McGee added of her personal thoughts on Trump. “During COVID-19, I lived with someone who was immunocompromised, and I think his handling of COVID-19 was abysmal,” she said.
Prospective jurors were queried about their opinions on Trump and his treatment in the criminal proceedings. They were also asked about their media consumption preferences and their affiliations, if any, with organizations like the QAnon movement, Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, Three Percenters, and Antifa.
Trump arrived at the Manhattan courtroom on Monday for the commencement of his first criminal trial and declared that the charges against him represent “an assault on America.”
The former president has been accused of falsifying records about his “hush money” payment to Stormy Daniels. Trump claimed that Democrats were using the hush money lawsuit as a political tool to force him to spend money and sit in court rather than traveling the country raising awareness of his candidacy.
Trump delivered six powerful words: “This is an assault on America.”
“Nothing like this has ever happened before. There’s never been anything like it. Every legal scholar says, this case is nonsense. It should never have been brought. [indecipherable] anything like this. There is no case and they’ve said it. People that don’t necessarily follow or like Donald Trump said, this is an outrage that this case was brought. This is political persecution,” Trump said.
“This is a persecution like never before. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. And again, it’s a case that should have never been brought. It’s an assault on America. And that’s why I’m very proud to be here. This is an assault on our country. And it’s a country that’s failing. It’s a country that’s run by a competent man who is very much involved in this case. This is really an attack on a political opponent. That’s all it is. So I’m very honored to be here. Thank you very much,” Trump added.
