WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump's tough week showed as well as any to date why he is facing a new and unprecedented reality as a presidential candidate — as he ping-ponged among a dizzying array of court appearances, judicial rulings, competing allegations and subsequent grievances.

By Thursday, he was complaining about the overlap in his busy legal schedule, railing that Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is presiding over his hush-money case in New York, wouldn't let him leave that trial to attend a Supreme Court hearing in Washington, D.C., over whether he can face criminal prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election. That decision also could affect Trump's classified-documents case in Florida.

"I should be there!" Trump fumed about the Supreme Court. "He wouldn't allow it to happen. He puts himself above the Supreme Court."

Most of the week, Trump sat in Merchan's Manhattan courtroom as former National Enquirer Publisher David Pecker testified. Pecker, a key witness in the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, helped prosecutors outline the alleged conspiracy that involved using the tabloid to kill negative stories about Trump and covering up payments during the 2016 campaign.

A trial break Wednesday might have offered a reprieve for Trump. Instead, it was full of more action against the former president. Trump was identified as a co-conspirator in two states: Michigan, during a pretrial hearing involving a group of "fake electors" who were charged as part of an election subversion scheme; and Arizona, where some of Trump's closest allies were charged in yet another plot to overturn the election using fake electors.

That indictment hit close to Trump because it included Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who became Trump's political fixer and confidant.

It didn't end there. By the time Trump got back to court on Thursday, prosecutors alleged that his attempts to spin perceptions about his Manhattan case — including calling Pecker "a nice guy" — violated the gag order because he was trying to sway a potentially harmful witness.

To cap it off, a federal judge in New York rejected Trump's attempt to throw out an $83.3-million civil defamation judgment for E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist who accused Trump of raping her in a department store in the 1990s. A jury ruled Trump defamed Carroll by denying her sexual-abuse allegations.

Will it matter in the election? Trump appeared unharmed during the presidential primary, with many Republican voters either dismissing the charges as a distraction or agreeing with Trump that he was being persecuted for upending the establishment.

In interviews last week with voters in Arizona, a key swing state, one supporter dismissed the fury around Trump's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, as overblown. Other supporters and potential supporters said their concerns about the economy and immigration and frustration with President Biden were more important than anything else.

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