In the rape trial coming up, The Daily Beast reports that the judge told Donald he doesn't have to be there, but he won't make a lame excuse for his absence.

Trump’s lawyers wanted the jurors, who will decide if Trump really did rape the journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, to hear that Trump would love to be there but cannot right now because it’s just too burdensome on New York City. They asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to issue a formal excuse, but the judge instead signed an order that says the opposite: Trump is very much welcome to show up and can’t complain about alleged insufficient security because it’s actually a highly guarded federal courthouse. After glancing at Trump’s campaign website and noticing that he has a campaign event in New Hampshire scheduled on what will be Day 3 of the rape trial, Kaplan wrote: “If the Secret Service can protect him at that event, certainly the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of New York can see to his security in this very secure federal courthouse.”