TRUMP IN COURT FOR HIS DAY OF RECKONING
▶ Supporters and opponents gather in New York as reviled and adored former president makes history
As Donald Trump made his way from his 58-storey New York skyscraper to a Manhattan court, America watched as a man who is both reviled and adored overturned yet another historical norm, becoming the first former president to face criminal charges.
Yesterday was a day of reckoning for Mr Trump, the property tycoon-turned-president who has until now dodged serious legal trouble despite years of investigations and lawsuits.
The twice-impeached, but never convicted, Mr Trump has also been quick to take other people to court but this was the first time he had to face a judge.
Hundreds of his supporters and anti-Trump demonstrators thronged the pavements outside Trump Tower and the park near the court where Mr Trump was to be arraigned, laying bare the divisions that have appeared across America since he won the 2016 presidential election.
“I have been waiting for this moment for, like, over four years,” said Sarah O’Brien Rosenstein, who travelled from Pennsylvania. “I just want justice to be served. I just don’t think that Trump is our man at all. You know the whole world collapsed when he was around, and I would like to see a more peaceful world.”
Christine Goddard travelled from the Washington area to support Mr Trump.
“He is a good person for all,” she told The National. “The people who don’t like him are not for all.”
New York Police were on high alert, determined to avoid the mayhem that occurred on January 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists stormed the US Capitol in an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss.
As The National went to press, there was no sign of violence and demonstrators on both sides were kept apart.
“New York City is always ready,” Mayor Eric Adams said.
“We know that this is a city where our NYPD and other law enforcement entities must be prepared at any given moment for anything to happen in this city.”
Mr Trump was indicted on criminal charges stemming from his alleged involvement in a hush-money payment made to an adult film star in 2016.
The front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency in 2024 has denied any wrongdoing. He took to social media to complain he would not face a fair trial in Manhattan, a liberal borough of New York.
“The highly partisan judge and his family are well-known Trump haters,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
He said the case should be moved to Staten Island. Jim Zirin, a former federal prosecutor whose book A Plaintiff In Chief analyses Mr Trump’s legal history, called the indictment a “watershed” moment in American history.
He predicted Mr Trump’s legal peril will not be limited to this criminal case.
“I anticipate that this indictment will be followed by other indictments of crimes that you and I might deem to be more serious, but these are serious crimes as well,” Mr Zirin told The National.
Outside Trump Tower, Colton Keeng said he had flown up from Orlando, Florida, to show his support for the former president. He said he was worried that the legal proceedings had become too political.
“I believe it is to send a message that the current party that’s primarily in power can do basically whatever they want to the opposing party,” Mr Keeng said.
One New York resident compared the historical importance of the day to the 9/11.
“I want to be a witness to history because this is unprecedented,” said Jim, who asked to be identified only by his first name.
“On 9/11, you wanted to remember where you were. On this day, I wanted to know that I was here and I witnessed it.”
Donald Trump’s greatest political virtue is that he is rarely boring. He shares that talent with Britain’s former prime minister Boris Johnson. If it is entertainment you want, both men deliver. Who but Boris Johnson would quote Kermit the Frog to the UN General Assembly? Who other than him would tell British business leaders how much he enjoys watching the animation series Peppa Pig? And who but former US President Donald Trump would become the only American president in history to be impeached not once but – like the remake of a box office hit – twice?
And now we have another sequel which you can be sure will run and run. It’s “Trump – The Indictments” with the man one US newspaper columnist refers to as “The Donald” going all out to attack the various supposed conspiracies against him. It is not clear what will happen next, but to be sure, the Donald Trump soap opera revolves around a central character who loves attention. He believes there is no such thing as bad publicity.
From his early business days, Mr Trump has always, to put it politely, fought vigorously to get what he wants, often using tough lawyers to browbeat opponents into submission. At times he seems like a character from old comic books who gets into impossible situations. He’s tied to a chair when suddenly, as the old comics would say, “with one bound he was free”. He even survived a 2016 incident when he spoke obnoxiously about women in ways that would have destroyed any presidential candidate in history.
White women voters helped solidify Trump’s victory in the 2016 election. He even survived telling the world that his 2017 inauguration was the best attended in history. Anyone with access to television pictures could see that simply was not true. Washington metro figures showed the number of people using public transport on inauguration day was much lower than for Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton or any president in recent memory.
Mr Trump has even survived the extraordinary stories emanating from leading Fox News staff, which appear to demonstrate that the Rupert Murdoch-owned TV channel publicly says Mr Trump is wonderful while privately key members of the Fox team tell each other how much they dislike him. And so Donald Trump, the twice impeached 45th President of the United States, is expected to make a great show and a potential Barnum and Bailey’s circus out of whatever happens in the US Courts and for a long time to come.
It would be unwise to underestimate him. After all, and despite the impeachments, in 2020 (when he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden), Mr Trump actually received several million more votes than in 2016 when he won the election against Hillary Clinton.
His appeal to Republican voters, especially white women and blue collar workers appears to be fairly solid.
But as he takes on the US authorities, the Manhattan court system, and a case involving the redoubtable former adult film star Stormy Daniels and others, it leads to the most interesting of political questions: with all the publicity that Donald Trump’s court case (or court cases) are about to receive in 2023, is it likely to help the Republican party in the presidential election of 2024?
That is the question the smartest political consultants, pollsters and potential candidates are asking themselves. Mr Trump is, as they say in show biz, box office. But the danger for Republicans is that the Trump show could make life difficult for any other Republican candidate. What should they do? As the party supposedly of law and order, should Republicans support the prosecution of Mr Trump? But since the party is also fearful of Mr Trump’s destructive tantrums should they pretend, as he does, that it is all a set-up, a witch-hunt? And will all the extra publicity – negative or otherwise – mean Mr Trump is not only back in the spotlight, but that he might really emerge as the Republican candidate for 2024?
Despite being impeached, in 2020 Trump actually received several million more votes than in 2016
Mr Trump has already been talking in his usual fashion about the great conspiracies against him. Having survived his well-documented examples of crass behaviour, perhaps he will astonish us all once more. But whatever potential circus unfolds in the courts, we might be about to see the entertainment value of Donald Trump diminishing in the eyes of American TV viewers. They might possibly think that the script has become a bit stale.
And how much does Fox News really matter? In February 2023, it was billed as the “most watched” cable news network in the US. But because American audiences are hugely fragmented at primetime, “most watched” means only 2.2 million viewers when there are 170 million registered voters. So, could the Trump show end with a cliffhanger and a return to the White House? Or could this made-for-TV-fantasy end in a very different type of highly secure US government facility – one aimed at keeping someone inside not for his political convictions but convictions of a much less pleasant kind? Yes. Stay tuned.