"This is not his first rodeo. He is going to be quite careful and thoughtful about how he handles this situation."

"I’m sure he’s thinking about when he draws lines, how he draws lines, what the lines mean and what agenda it plays into."

Said Katherine B. Forrest, a former federal district judge, about Lewis A. Kaplan, federal district judge in the ongoing E. Jean Carroll trial. She's quoted in "As Trump Treats Trials Like Rallies, Judges Study How to Rein Him In/One judge was reluctantly permissive. Another came down hard. Their contrasting approaches may inform the jurists overseeing the former president’s criminal trials" (NYT).

I don't think Trump is treating his trials "like rallies." Have you seen his rallies? He's far more restrained in court. But he is using something of his own style and is finding ways to take what has been thrown at him and turn it into useful political discourse. What should a judge do? If he cracks down too hard, he's giving Trump new material. 

How do you like the expression "This is not his first rodeo"? I try not to let it annoy me. I try to be amused. I picture the 79-year-old judge on a bucking bronco. 

Even Michael Caine — even as he pronounces "rodeo" ro-DAY-oh — says "ain't." 

 

BONUS: Warning: language:

"In a world where widely available AI thingummies such as ChatGPT can generate a 90,000-word 'thriller about a bloke with a tough British name racing against time to cut through some red tape'..."

"'... about something vaguely nuclear, written in the style of Sir Michael Caine' at the touch of a button, it is terrific to know that Sir Michael has gone to the trouble of writing such a thing himself, with his own hand. His publisher says he is 'bursting with ideas for fiction' which is good news, because when a chap is 90 years old and at the start of a seven-book deal then you want him at least to have the ideas for each one ready as soon as possible (talk about 'race against time')."

Writes Giles Coren in "Why I won’t stoop to celebrity authorship/Michael Caine has written a thriller, despite not being a 'literature person,' and he definitely did it all by himself" (London Times).

“I was struck by how stunningly banal and formulaic it all was.”

Michael Caine thinks these movies today are no damned good, not like in the old days. Is that the distorted perspective of an old man thinking about the past? Or is he right?