re: 5 minutes into this mornings Stormy Daniels cross and Judge Merchan is working mighty hard

I have not followed this that closely, but this is pretty egregious and blatant from the judge. Assuming there are at least a couple of jurors that are somewhat neutral fair-minded and intelligent (hopefully Trump's team was able to get a couple that weren't in the bag for the prosecution) don't you think they will easily see what the judge is doing to the point that it will actually help Trump with those jurors? Sometimes a judge blatantly favoring one side over the other and not allowing the jurors to hear what is clearly relevant, important, and admissible can be counterproductive to what the judge thinks he is doing.

Defense: You said this yesterday, but there is sworn testimony and previous statements where you said the opposite, let's look at those previous statements so you can tell us which time you were lying.

Judge: No, I'm not going to allow the jury to see that.

Jury: What the frick - I want to see this information and figure out if this witness is lying to us.