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A potential juror, Kara McGee, was dismissed from jury selection for Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan.
She described the experience of answering questions about Trump while he sat 30 feet away as “jarring,” seeing the larger-than-life figure up close as “just another guy” whose fate the jury could determine.
“What was that like answering questions, including some about Donald Trump, as he is sitting thirty feet from you?” MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard asked.
McGee made eye contact with Trump before and after answering questions.
She said this added to the tension of realizing the jury held power over Trump’s future.
“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?” Hillyard asked.
“Yes. Yeah,” McGee said.
“At what point?” Hillyard 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?” Hillyard asked.
While not a Trump fan due to his handling of COVID-19, McGee acknowledged the responsibility of any juror to potentially change someone’s life forever.
Jurors were questioned about Trump and media consumption preferences to assess biases.
“I think so,” McGee said. “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.”
“I’m not a fan,” McGee said. “During COVID-19, I lived with someone who was immunocompromised, and I think his handling of COVID-19 was abysmal,” she said.
Trump arrived and declared the charges a “political persecution” and “assault on America” unlike anything ever seen, saying the case should not have been brought.
“This is an assault on America,” Trump said.
“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,” he 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.
