T. knew that something was unusual when he arrived at his campaign rally. From the very first moment it struck him as an odd place for a rally. It was inside a Manhattan courtroom. His children had spoken, which was typical for a rally, but their remarks had been strangely confined to their business dealings. Instead of saying how great he was and how wonderful he was going to make America, they had said things about negotiations and used the word “boilerplate.”

Other things struck him as odd. For instance, when he entered, they did not play music. Instead of his usual crowd, there was just one man in a black robe looming at a big, high desk. T. sat down at the place indicated for him and immediately someone began to draw him with colored pencils, as though he were at a carnival. Could it be that his many savory business associates were playing some sort of prank on him, T. wondered? He did not wish to appear not to understand the joke.

Four things we learned from Trump’s testimony in the New York fraud trial

Everyone was looking at him. They seemed by their expressions to be waiting for something. The man at the desk looked at him oddly. T. thought he had better let this fellow know that he was a man of the world. “Aberdeen is the oil capital of Europe, very rich,” he said. Someone objected that this was irrelevant. T. was surprised that people who did not want to hear him talk had made the effort to come to his rally. It seemed as though this small, intimate space would have very expensive tickets. And yet they wouldn’t let him talk! They even said he was under a gag order, whatever that was.

They said he was on trial for fraud. It didn’t make any sense. Just because he allegedly kept doing fraud and admitted to inflating his business valuations! There was a little thing at the bottom of all his business papers that he was pretty sure explained that they were works of creative fiction inspired by the concept of a budget sheet but should not be mistaken for budget sheets, and that meant they were not fraud. Anyone knew that!

T. thought it best to deliver his rally speech as usual. He would certainly not be the one to admit that something was out of the ordinary. He would tell them about his hatred of windmills (“I’m not a windmill person”) and how much he esteemed Mar-a-Lago, a place of incalculable value because it was the most beautiful spot in the world. He would tell them how he would be the next president, though perhaps it would be better not to elaborate on his plans to get vengeance right away. He would rail about witch hunts and judges. He started off quite strongly, but as he went on, he began to feel ill at ease. It was strange to speak like this without his cheering audience, with just the man sitting there at the desk growing visibly irritated.

Indeed, the audience of this strange rally in a New York courtroom was only one man who said his name was Justice Arthur Engoron. He kept interrupting T.’s speech to ask him questions, or have lawyers ask him questions, which was not how a rally ought to go at all.

Testifying in fraud case, Trump clashes with judge and draws reprimands

Finally this man would not let T. continue. He turned to a man who was sitting there with T. and addressed him instead. “Mr. Kise, can you control your client?” the man asked. “This is not a political rally. This is a courtroom.” This seemed absurd to T. Of course it was a political rally. He resumed his remarks.

“I am not here to hear what he has to say,” Engoron insisted. T.’s attorneys had stood up, and now, at the judge’s insistence, they sat down. “I’m here to hear him answer questions.” T. didn’t know what to make of this. “This is a very unfair trial,” he said. (How odd, he thought later, to have used the word “trial” and not the word “rally”!) “Very, very and I hope the public is watching.”

They had a break. Usually he would take this time to threaten everyone involved with whatever was happening to him, but they said if he did so, he would be fined. Fined! What sort of Kafkaesque dystopia was he living in?

And this was not his only rally held in a tiny courtroom. He had to keep appearing in these places. He was on trial everywhere, all the time, and no one could tell him why. “That’s not true,” somebody said. “Everyone has been telling you why constantly. You are on trial in the state of New York for business fraud. You are on trial in Florida for your mishandling of classified documents. And you are on trial in Georgia for trying to overturn the election.”

No, he could not understand it. He would simply refuse to understand it, and see what would happen then.