On a sunny Tuesday morning, the day Donald Trump was to be arraigned, Trump supporters gathered in a little park across from the Manhattan criminal court. By 11, there was a robust counterprotest and police had separated the two groups with metal barricades. “Fuck Donald Trump! Fuck Donald Trump!” a young guy rapped, beats laid down by an old-style boombox.
The other side was packed, too—with reporters. From smartly dressed TV journalists to bloggers filming on their phones, we all wandered around trying to talk to the Trump diehards. “So, what brought you here?” we all asked, several hundred times.
With the exception of a woman carrying a sign declaring the media to be a virus (which, well, we did keep replicating at the rally, exponentially increasing our numbers), most were hesitant at first, but when I promised I was a “nice reporter” it didn’t take much cajoling for them to tell me about how Trump’s indictment is the greatest injustice in America. Or that Alvin Bragg is a Marxist set on destroying the country. “Look, nobody’s perfect,” one man says, shrugging his shoulders, about Trump’s pay-off to porn Star Stormy Daniels days before the election, an event that landed his former fixer Michael Cohen in prison for a year.
A young man named Michael Picard (“Any relation to Captain Picard?” I joke. “No!” he says, angrily and with certainty). He tells me that Trump is still President. He’s wearing a MAGA hat, American flag overalls — and nothing else. “Oh you think the vote was rigged?” I ask.
“No.”
“So then… how?” I ask.
“He lost the popular vote and the electoral college. But he’s still President,” he replies.
“But … how?” I genuinely want to know. He glares at me and offers no further explanation.
Other ideas on display: George Soros controls everything, from Alvin Bragg to institutions throughout the globe, one man tells me. “It’s not just Soros. It’s the Rothchilds!”
“Why do you think they’re doing that?” I ask. He looks at me like I’m an idiot and says, “They want world domination.”
Another man starts crying. “Trump loves this country more than anybody ever has and anybody ever will!”
I decide it’s cheap to interview only people who are clearly mentally ill and go up to a normal looking guy wearing a regular sports cap and a plain white shirt. He’d holding a sign that says, “At least Trump didn’t start any wars.” That’s fair. The first election I voted in was in 2000. That one was successfully stolen. And my generation, which became politicized by the Bush era, watched as a President lied to start a war, rather than lie about a blow job.
Famously, Barack Obama ensured that absolutely no one would face repercussions for an atrocity that led to millions of deaths. The wars in the Middle East super-charged the migrant crisis, leading to a rise in xenophobia, and directly to Brexit and Trump. Watching W. be publicly redeemed because he’s not Trump makes me want to burn down MSNBC headquarters. But I digress!
“Do you mean the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?” I ask the normal looking anti-war guy.
“Yes,” he says. I’m excited about finding common ground and start nodding. Then he keeps talking.
“And the attempt to overthrow Assad. And the proxy war in Ukraine.”
“You think the people in Ukraine aren’t fighting for their country?” I ask.
“They’re fighting! But it’s happening because the CIA overturned their government in 2014!” To his credit, this kind of conspiracy thinking festers mostly on the fringe left (Thanks Grayzone!). So … it’s the lunatic version of “working across the aisle?”
Things are winding down. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had hyped the rally nonstop since the announcement of the indictment, gave a brief speech at 10:30 and then booked it. And I can’t emphasize enough the ratio of Trump supporters to reporters. It was like 2-10.
Maybe, I think, a really big protest is happening at Trump tower. Maybe I’ll even see the elusive Congresswoman Greene. I hike to 59th street, where Trump is expected to leave from Trump tower by motorcade. As I near, the immediate area around Trump Tower has been barricaded. The streets around the barricades are packed, to alarming, stampede-levels—with tourists, other gawkers and more journalists. Any journalist in the world who’s not at the meager Trump protest downtown is there.
Trump is supposed to come out any minute, but he delays and delays. Once someone who works in the office leaves the barricade, they can’t come back in until Trump leaves. Finance bros, including many who work in Trump Tower, have a mini-meltdown because they can’t go eat lunch at their desks. It’s a pretty solid metaphor for Trump screwing his own employees.
As for Trump fans—I saw exactly 5. One man wore a pin that advised, “Social distance from liberals,”—it seemed counterproductive for him to be mashed against roughly a million of likely New York liberals.
“He earned that gold toilet!” the fourth Trump supporter I see there, woman, yells at a liberal. She leaves soon after that.
Within a few hours, Trump had been delivered to the court and the crowd had largely dissipated. Fears of another January 6th proved unwarranted.
Look, I know it’s Manhattan, not Alabama. But on election night, 2016, I was in the Upper East Side when Trump won. An insanely huge victory parade spontaneously materialized. The throngs of Trump supporters were ecstatic, thrusting their pro-Trump signs in the air in ecstasy like in a weird wing-nut Rio Carnival.
A few hours after Trump was driven to Manhattan criminal court, one lone supporter remained across from Trump tower just yelling “Stormy Daniels! Stormy Daniels! Stormy Daniels!” at passersby. “Who wouldn’t have sex with a hooker!? Who wouldn’t have sex with a hooker!? Who wouldn’t have sex with a hooker?!?!?” he demanded to know, with a mix of outrage and genuine befuddlement.
Here are two takeaways for me. First, Trump’s success always hinged on the media’s—liberal, conservative alike—lurid obsession with him, which might explain the absurd ratio of journalists to Trump supporters at both events.
Second, the Trump die-hards who did come out—they were fucking crazy. The fringe of the fringe of the fringe. If Trump had never been born they’d be passing out Lyndon LaRouche flyers on the street.
And that’s significant for Democrats’ electoral prospects in 2024!
I know it’s popular among liberals to presume that anyone who voted for Trump in 2016 is batshit insane. It’s not true. Ahead of 2020, I did a story about swing voters and very many were perfectly fine people whose pet causes (and hatred of Hillary Clinton) made them unable to bring themselves to vote for the Democrat.
There was one lovely woman in North Carolina, a former addict who worked to bring harm reduction practices to a wildly conservative county ravaged by opioids. She’d cast her vote for Trump because she despised Hillary Clinton. Also, she genuinely believes abortion is murder. You might disagree with that position, but if someone thinks abortion is murder, it kinda makes sense that it’s the issue for them and voting for a pro-choice Democrat is anathema to them.
But she was disgusted by Trump’s behavior in office. And so she sat out 2020. Other people I spoke with, too, had been lifelong Republicans who would never vote for a Democrat. But they too refused to vote for Trump after 4 years of his crass behavior and lurid scandals. They also sat out the election.
I’m a little torn about the Bragg prosecution. On the one hand, Trump probably broke finance campaign laws. On the other hand, I’m sorry, but I really don’t think a DA would go after, like, Mitt Romney, for breaking campaign finance rules. So yeah, sorry, the prosecution is political, if totally legally justified.
Everyone’s worried that the prosecution will backfire by endearing Trump to conservative voters. But Bragg, whatever his intentions, is doing the Democratic party a solid. The inevitable media circus around it is going to suck all of the air out of the GOP primary, further starving Gov. Ron DeSantis’s sad campaign of oxygen.
If Trump’s the GOP nominee, there’s no way this will turn the reasonable conservatives who gave him a shot in 2016, but who were then utterly appalled by his behavior, another chance. Meanwhile, DeSantis, who built his campaign on being Trump, but without porn stars and “grab her by the pussy,” now has to lick the ring and pretend the prosecution against Trump is an outrageous government overreach.
DeSantis has no campaign story now. He’ll flop as hard as Mike Bloomberg or whoever that guy is that runs Starbucks is, just another power-hungry asshole that clearly doesn’t have Trump’s pizazz or any real belief in the convictions he pretends to hold to fool the yokels.
What I would like to see is a Democratic presidential campaign—given this great GREAT gift—come up with a concrete message and ideology beyond “At least we’re not Trump.”
I thought this prosecution was the right thing to do, but now that Trump!s face is everywhere I look, I take it back. I would definitely cut him a deal dismissing all charges forever if he would agree to live a private life in Florida and I would never have to think about him again
I enjoy reading your articles and hearing your perspectives and you make me laugh.
Here’s some random thoughts:
Trump is great for the MSM. Their
ratings will go up.
I had a patient who came in after the election in 2016 and she kept on saying 45. I had no idea what she was talking about and I finally asked her. She said Trump wasn’t her president and she refused to address him by name. I asked her who the president was. I couldn’t get a straight answer from her.
I find it very interesting that the majority of patients I treat for opioid dependency are conservative. Granted i practice in South Orange County Ca. which is still pretty conservative but that still is very surprising to me.