Brawlers, jokers and a naked cowboy as Trump returns to New York

At a park in lower Manhattan, near the courthouse where Donald Trump would be arraigned for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up a supposed affair with a porn star, police had erected metal barriers to divide the Trump fans from his haters. The two sides shouted at each other from across the barricades. They were a physical manifestation of the country’s partisan id. Scuffles often broke out. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman and Trump devotee (pictured below), attempted to give a speech but was drowned out. Two men engaged in a slanging match. “Get the fuck out of here, America first!” said one of them, again and again, growing red in the face, as he repeatedly shoved the other in the chest. Police had to break up the brawlers – something they did several times over the course of the day.

Yet despite the raised voices and fists, the historic occasion of a former president being formally charged with 34 felonies had the staginess of a reality show. You could call it “The Defendant”. The protesters did not seem genuinely bent on violence. Their posturing screamed “hold me back”, much like you would find in pro-wrestling (a spectacle in which Trump himself once participated). A carnival atmosphere prevailed. Trump impersonators cracked jokes; a man known as the Naked Cowboy, because he wears cowboy boots, a Stetson and little else, strummed his guitar. “Everybody’s just so relaxed, it’s crazy,” said a woman on the phone wearing a MAGA cap (invoking Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”). She laughed when she mentioned that she was occupying the same bench as a journalist from the Financial Times, an example par excellence of the despised mainstream media.

The appetite for violence might have been stronger if more protesters had shown up. There were only about 150 Trump supporters at the park. They were far outnumbered by journalists and, as the day wore on, by counter-protesters. I asked Dion Cini, who described himself as New York’s “biggest Trump supporter”, why so many of his comrades had stayed away. “They’re scared shitless. And some people have jobs unfortunately,” he said, his “Trump or Death” flag fluttering overhead. They didn’t want their pictures taken by the press or the FBI.

Some protesters seemed just to go through the motions. A woman called Juliet Germanotta declared herself a diehard Trump supporter. But almost within the same breath she said, “I’m not gonna worship Trump. Let’s hear what the charges are, we’ll go from there.” She seemed more interested in courting notoriety than defending the former president: she called a reporter a “pansy”; told one interlocutor that she had covid and blew smoke from a burning sage stick into his face; and attempted to remove a giant “Trump Lies All the Time” banner laid on the ground by counter-protesters.

I kept encountering displays of Trump fealty (and Trump-hatred) that felt perfunctory or performative. I met Maverick Stow, a 19-year-old realtor and self-described “libertarian” from Long Island who wore a camo backpack and held an American flag, as he chatted with two other men, both progressive liberals. One of them wore a T-shirt which riffed sardonically on Trump’s presidential campaign: “Trump 20-24 years in prison”. The trio were politely discussing tax policy and the travails of the middle class. They nodded agreeably; they talked about the importance of finding “common ground”. When I spoke with Stow later he told me that he had come to the park to protest against the arraignment of Trump, whom he supported because of his (not at all libertarian) immigration and economic policies. But the two progressives told me that Trump had barely come up in the conversation. He “didn’t really have any opinions on Trump, frankly,” one of them said. Stow’s pursuit of reasoned debate seemed to hark back to an ancient era of political discourse (that is, before 2016).

I had started the day thinking I would see real fisticuffs. At 9am a portly, 34-year-old man wearing a MAGA cap, stars-and-stripes overalls (with nothing underneath) and matching socks and trainers began to orate in the park. He was a marketing consultant from Connecticut named Michael Picard. A press scrum enveloped him. “We should throw the district attorney in Guantanamo Bay!” he said, raising his fist, smiling slightly as he looked into his handheld Go-Pro camera. Picard was referring to Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s chief prosecutor, who had brought the charges against Trump. “Donald Trump didn’t do anything,” Picard said in a nasal monotone. “He’s the greatest president of the United States.” Asked why he believed that, he said, “Well, he has a magnificent head of hair. Secondly, he’s just amazing.”

“The woman next to you doesn’t agree with you,” observed a trouble-stirring journalist, gesturing to a placard-holder just a few feet away from Picard. A woman was holding a sign that read “We believe Stormy Daniels”, referring to the porn star whose alleged liaison with Trump served as the backdrop of the district attorney’s investigation. “Boo, get the counter-protesters out of here,” Picard said, in a surprisingly dispassionate voice. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. It almost seemed like Picard was joshing. (Later, I looked him up and found that Picard is a self-described free-speech activist who “protests protesters”.) I looked away for a moment. When I turned back, he and the counter-protester had embraced each other. ■

Charlie McCann is a feature writer for 1843 magazine