The real reason Donald Trump now claims he’ll testify in his criminal trial

Donald Trump announced today that he’ll testify during his criminal trial. No one expects that he’ll actually end up testifying. But it’s noteworthy that Trump is now making this claim. Why?

Trump’s lawyers know full well why they can’t let him testify. He’s so far gone cognitively that he’ll not only help get himself convicted, he’ll likely end up getting himself hit with perjury charges along the way. We’ve seen from Trump’s rallies (before his handlers pulled the plug on them) that he’s incapable of staying on script anymore. And unlike his rallies, his testimony wouldn’t come with a teleprompter.

What’s interesting though is that Trump probably thinks he is going to testify. It suggests he understands that he really is going to be convicted on all these felonies, and he’s desperate enough to risk taking the stand. Of course Trump is incapable of understanding just how far gone his mind is and how big of a risk testifying would be.

But dementia patients are also highly prone to suggestion. Trump’s lawyers can simply feed him some arbitrary reason for why he can’t testify, repeat it enough times, and wait for Trump to forget where he heard it from and think it was his own idea.

So yeah, Trump is unlikely to testify, no matter what he’s saying right now. But if he does end up testifying, it’ll be a disaster for him and a big victory for the rest of us.