The first time Donald Trump faced the writer E. Jean Carroll in court, in the spring of 2023, he declined to appear at the trial. He lost: The jury, finding him liable both for assaulting her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s and for defaming her in the aftermath, awarded her $5 million in damages. This month, another defamation suit went to trial—a case based on claims Trump had made about Carroll during his presidency in 2019. This time, he attended the proceedings. Or, more accurately, he attempted to star in them, treating the courtroom as a set and casting himself, variously, as the trial’s screenwriter, narrator, publicist, and tragic hero. On Thursday, very briefly, Trump took the stand. On Friday, as Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, delivered her closing arguments, he made an abrupt, dramatic exit. Sitting with his defense team, he pouted and smirked and stage-whispered his indignation about the proceedings (“con job,” “witch hunt”), at one point emoting so loudly that the judge, Lewis Kaplan, threatened to remove him from the courtroom.

The emoter, however, was unfazed. “I would love it,” Trump replied.

The exchange made for a tidy metaphor: for the trial itself and for the broader implications of Trump’s stage fight with the American legal system. How do you handle someone who sees himself as an exception to every rule? Carroll’s lawyers framed the damages they sought as a justice of last resort; although Trump “may not care about the law” and “certainly” doesn’t care about truth, Roberta Kaplan argued, “he does care about money.” And the jury’s verdict, delivered Friday afternoon, suggests that the approach worked. The amount they awarded Carroll, $83.3 million, comprises $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million in punitive damages.

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The verdict, in practice, may well do what Roberta Kaplan claimed it could: keep Trump in check and make him put his money, in a direct sense, where his mouth is. But cynicism sells. The notion that the system is rigged has its appeal, whether applied to electoral politics or the courts. And as Trump’s trials proliferate, he will likely become more extreme in his denunciations of the law. During another courtroom appearance Trump made earlier this month—for charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election—his lawyer argued that he should have absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken while he was president. The three-judge panel seemed skeptical of a standard that would allow Trump to live above the law. But that is his preferred perch. And many Americans have endorsed his elevation. Last week, Donald Trump lost a case in court. But he won the New Hampshire primary.

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