The former President Trump goes from the courtroom to the campaign trail. He's about to start speaking to supporters at a rally on the Jersey Shore. It's his first rally since adult film star Stormy Daniels took the stand in his hush money trial in New York City, and now, Trump remains under a gag order. The judge in his trial has threatened the former President with jail time if he violates that order again, which would include talking about any of the witnesses. Plus, Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, the key witness for the prosecution, set to take stand now on Monday. So why is Trump choosing New Jersey for his campaign rally? It's not exactly Trump country, but where he's actually speaking is. Cnn's Elaina Trina joining us now live with more Elaina, New Jersey, a blue state pretty reliably, but he has found that pocket that's very supportive of him.

He has. And as you can see behind me, Jessica, this rally has already started. You can see that he has a ton of supporters here, a ton of rallygoers. And Wildwood, New Jersey, part of the Jersey Shore, is also in Cape May district, which is a very red district. It actually went for Donald Trump in the last two elections, despite him losing the overall state of New Jersey to Biden in 2020 by roughly 16 points. Now, I also just want to address something that you brought up in your intro there, which is that Donald Trump is still under a gag order. I think it's going to be very difficult for the former President to avoid being able to attack people like Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen at this point during the trial. We are just off the heels of a very explosive testimony from Stormy Daniels this past week, and he knows that Michael Cohen, his former fixer, is testifying on Monday. Something I consistently hear behind the scenes from Donald Trump's advisors is that they think it's unfair that the witnesses are able to tell their side of the story and that Donald Trump can.

And it's something Donald Trump is clearly very angry about behind the scenes. So keep that in mind for when Donald Trump takes the stage in just a few moments. The The other thing I want to point out about New Jersey is it is interesting that they are here picking a battleground... Excuse me, a state that is not a battleground state. New Jersey, as you mentioned, is very blue. Trump's campaign argues that they think they have been able to get some supporters here and some media attention from the nearby actual battleground state of Pennsylvania. But at the end of the day, it's an interesting choice, particularly because Donald Trump really hasn't campaign that much on the sidelines of this trial. This is his third rally since since the trial began, really only a second day of actual campaigning since the trial began. And so when I talk to other Republicans, they admit and acknowledge that it is odd that he chose to campaign in New Jersey and not a more critical battleground state for his campaign ahead of November. Jessica?

All right. Elaina Treen for us in Wildwood, New Jersey. Thanks so much for that reporting. And I want to bring in senior political analyst and senior editor at the Atlantic, Ron Braunstein. Ron, great to see you. Trump has said and has complained again and again he wants to be on the campaign trail. This is keeping him off the campaign trail. But he gets this day off from court, and he's choosing New Jersey, which, of course, is close to where he has his golf club in Bedmanster, also in New Jersey. Today, but it's a blue state. Is this just a morale boost for him with friendly faces and adoring fans? I mean, I guess you could argue he'll get some mileage out of the Philadelphia television market.

Yeah. Who doesn't want to go to the Jersey shore? I know. So That's true. I will forgive him for that. But look, it is a broader issue, which is that there are a lot of Republicans who aren't easy. Donald Trump has never been a vigorous campaigner in terms of doing a lot of appearances. There's a lot of hand wringing and concerned in Republican circles that they're not building the campaign organizations that they will ultimately need if it is a photo finish close race in many of the swing states. At the moment, they're doing fine in swing state polling, even better than they are, I think, in national polling. So there's less pressure on him than there might be. But as the year goes on, if in fact the situation tightens in many of these swing states, I think there's going to be a lot of anxiety among Republicans, about the time they lost in the spring. Forget about his campaigning, just building the building blocks of a campaign in these states, which is not happening at the rate that many local Republicans expected or hoped.

Yeah. And Elaina brought this up, but he is, of course, still subject to that gag order that he has now violated multiple times. The judge in the case has said that if he keeps doing it, he's going to put him in jail. He doesn't want to do that. How hard do you think it's going to be tonight for him to not violate. We've seen him shift who he goes after. Now he goes after the judge, which is allowed under the gag order.

Yeah. The thing is, Donald Trump is running for President, and that has a certain set of expectations with it. And he's also someone who has spent his whole life, really, behaving as though he believes the rules that apply to others don't apply to him. So it's in character that he is lashing out in all of these ways against all of these prosecutors and judges that we have seen for months. But in this instance, he is a criminal defendant, right? And he is ultimately subject to the same restrictions that other criminal defendants face. The judge, if anything, has been extremely accommodating, and obviously does not want to take the step of putting Trump in any prison-like, or even some people have likened it to a legal timeout circumstance. But he is a criminal defendant, and ultimately, the judge does have to defend the sanctity of the criminal justice system. At times, it has seemed as though Trump is daring him to give him some a sanction like that, but we'll see again tonight how far he goes. Yeah.

And Elaina Trin has some new reporting that Robert Kennedy Jr's campaign has gone from a perceived nuisance to a political problem in the eyes of the Trump campaign. They're not categorizing it as a threat, but they're describing the Kennedy campaign as a problem. What do you make of that? Yeah.

Look, it's very hard to calculate exactly how Kennedy is going to affect each state. I mean, in general, I think it is hard. Two Two elections have shown us that it's very difficult for Donald Trump to get to 50 % of the vote. Anything that reduces the number you need to win in these states in some ways benefits him. But I think what you're going to see is both Biden and Trump highlight the aspects of Kennedy that are most repellent, in effect, to their own voters. I mean, from the point of view of the Trump campaign, they want to highlight that he's an environmentalist and tag him with the Green New deal. From the Biden campaign, they I really want to stress that he's an anti-vax extremist in a way to appeal to those. Each side, I think, in the end, is going to see Kennedy as something that could either be a weapon wielded against them or for them on the other side, depending on who they can define him as attractive to and who they can define him as ideologically unacceptable to. So it's going to be a very complex and fluid situation.

And I bet there's going to be a fair amount of third party spending, independent spending, high-conspiracy theory elements of the Kennedy campaign in a way designed to make him more attractive and more or less attractive to either side.

It is going to be really interesting to see how that plays out. I also wanted to ask you about these comments from President Trump, who this week denounced Jewish voters who support President Joe Biden. We can listen to what he said.

The fact is that Crooked Joe hates Israel, and he hates the Jewish people. There's no question about that. And if Jewish people are going to vote for Joe Biden, they have to have their head examined. He's a disaster for Israel. The problem is that he hates the Palestinians also, and even more so, and he just doesn't know what to do. He's a confused man.

Ron, what is he talking about? Is this a Is it effective at all?

Well, it's reflective, I think, in many ways, of where we are. Joe Biden, obviously, has been a staunch supporter of Israel for his entire career. The fact that even Joe Biden has been driven to the point that he has in terms of threatening to withhold offensive, not defensive, offensive weapons from Israel if they invade Rafa, in my view, is a testament to Bibi Netanyahu's legacy in American politics, that he has essentially shattered the bipartisan consensus that made Israel unassailable in US politics for many years and left Israel almost entirely dependent on one, not entirely, almost entirely, but increasingly dependent on one party, the most conservative elements of the Republican Party. The fact is that a broad range of US voters, including a substantial portion of Jews, as well as young voters and other elements of the Democratic coalition, are deeply alienated from the way Israel and Netanyahu has pursued this war. And so Trump is trying to slice off a piece of the Jewish electorate, which is roughly three to one democratic. But in so doing, he is sending an important reminder to all of those protesters on college campuses or elsewhere who are essentially saying they want to withhold their vote from Biden because he went too far down the road of enabling Netanyahu in this war.

The reality is, if they do that, Trump is making very clear here, they are going to empower someone who is going to give Netanyahu and Israel even more rope to pursue the war in Gaza the way they want, as well as Stephen Miller, openly threatening Trump's top immigration adviser to deport pro-Palestinian demonstrators if they are returned to power in '25. So Trump's comments, I think, are just very reflective of how the political debate about Israel has evolved in the US. And I think you can lay that, almost, you can lay that overwhelmingly at the doorstep of Netanyahu and his strategy, really going back to the Clinton administration, of allying with the right in the US and resisting, rejecting, renouncing, pretty much anything democratic presidents have asked him to do.

All right, Ron Brownstein. Great to have you. Thanks so much.