NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s historic hush money trial got underway Monday at Manhattan Supreme Court, where the former president was dealt a set of legal blows — when he wasn’t nodding off at the defense table — and a stern warning that he can’t pick and choose when he wants to turn up.

The trial officially got underway at 2:30 p.m. when the first batch of 96 prospective jurors who filed into Justice Juan Merchan’s 15th-floor courtroom were sworn in — and only 32 were still in their seats a few hours later, expected to face further questioning Tuesday.

“The system of trial by jury is one of the cornerstones of our judicial system,” Merchan said, as some potential jurors stretched out their necks to peek at Trump seated at the defense table and looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

“The name of this case is the People of the State of New York vs. Donald Trump.”

Trump stood briefly as Merchan introduced him, looking around the room with a tight-lipped smirk. Straight out of the gate, more than 50 Manhattanites, almost half of them white women, raised their hands when the judge asked if anyone felt they couldn’t be fair or impartial.

“I just couldn’t do it,” one young woman told reporters outside the courtroom after she was dismissed. Merchan previously ruled that the jurors’ names would be anonymous to the public and that their addresses would remain unknown to Trump, noting safety concerns.

Merchan dismissed at least nine jurors who said they couldn’t serve because of various personal commitments and was expected to get through the first batch by around 11 a.m. Tuesday.

The former president walked into Merchan’s courtroom around 9:30 a.m. with his Secret Service entourage at the center of a media and law enforcement maelstrom clogging up the downtown courthouse and much of lower Manhattan. He looked to be in foul humor and was spotted appearing to fall asleep at one point while reclined back in his chair with his legs outstretched during the morning session.

Outside the courtroom, Trump decried the case as an “an assault on America.”

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Trump said. “This is political persecution, persecution like never before.”

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