The simple answer as to why the judge may be right is this. When Trump became the client of an attorney, he became a ward of the court - https://www.youarelaw.org/Download/CorpusJurisSecundum-AttorneyClient.pdf. This means that he is like an underage person who can't speak in court. The attorneys and the judge do all the talking. But the attorneys are subject to the judge. If they fight too hard for their client, the judge will find a way to disbar them if necessary. Trump gave the whole thing up by becoming a client of an attorney. He should have stood in court as a man (not as the person on the indictment), hired a bunch of attorneys as his co-counsels, and done all his defense by his own speaking/writing, guided by co-counsel advice.