Donald Trump just took another ugly blow from within

When the news broke on Monday that Donald Trump’s defense attorney Joe Tacopina was quitting, it elicited sort of an odd response: “Wait, which case was he representing Trump in?” And that alone underscores just how deep of a corner Trump is backed into.

Tacopina represented Trump in his first E. Jean Carroll trial, but isn’t representing Trump in his second E. Jean Carroll trial. Why? No one knows. Least of all Donald Trump, whose attorneys come and go more frequently than luggage on a carousel at LAX airport. But the bigger problem for Trump is that Tacopina was seemingly his main attorney in his New York criminal case. No, not Trump’s New York civil trial, which just concluded. We’re talking about Trump’s New York criminal trial. The one everyone sort of forgot existed.

That trial is coming up too. It’s penciled in for spring of 2024, and at this point the only way it won’t happen in that timeframe is if it’s rescheduled so that Trump’s federal criminal trial in Washington DC can go first. But one way or the other, Trump will be put on criminal trial in New York before the election. And now his top defense attorney in that case is gone.

So who’s representing Trump at this point? I’ve long joked that by the time Trump got to his criminal trials he’d be representing himself. We halfway saw that last week when Trump tried to give his own closing argument in his New York civil trial. With Tacopina gone and hardly anyone else left, will Trump indeed be representing himself at his New York criminal trial? Remember, representing yourself is a near-automatic way to lose.

What we’re watching right now is Donald Trump starting to lose his criminal trials before he even gets to them. He’s losing his appeals. He’s losing his stall tactic gambits. He’s even losing his attorneys. Trump is just plain losing – which these days is pretty much all he knows how to do.