Circus, division, chaos y strain are concepts that have surrounded the political life of Donald Trump since now about eight years ago he descended the stairs of his tower in the Fifth Avenue and announced that entered the race to achieve the Republican nomination, which he not only achieved, but with which he beat in 2016 Hillary Clinton to become president of the United States. Those same elements have once again been deployed with all their power, and with considerable doses of smartin the vicinity of the court building in lower Manhattan where Trump becomes this Tuesday the first occupant of the Oval Office charged with criminal charges.
Collect Pond, the small park opposite 100 Center Street, is the setting where the divisions and the Polarization of the US are deploying in this historic journey. They do it literally, with the space divided in two by police billboards to welcome aside those who protest pro trump and those who have come to celebrate his imputation. But as in everyday life, physical barriers are not waterproof. And throughout the morning they are seeing each other argument crossoversin a calm voice or shouting, and also moments of confrontation between two factions that, at least here, appear irreconcilable.
With all of Center Street, where the court building is, taken over by press installations and cameras, in the square there are more journalists than protesters, for or against Trump. Also, an impressive display of uniformed police officers.
The feeling of being in a representation of the absurd it becomes unavoidable at times. And perhaps a paradigmatic moment to express it is what happened when the radical Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene arrived at the pro-Trump protest. Like when she before she has briefly appeared around the square George Santoshis colleague from ranks peppered by the scandal of his countless liesshe has also moved surrounded by a dense swarm of photographers, cameras and journalists.
When the representative of Georgia has spoken, through a megaphone, her words denouncing that the imputation of Trump “is a assault on democracy”, have been silenced by the constant beeping of some whistles. They had been distributed, paradoxically, by another Pro Trump protester. And it had to be later, giving interviews to the press in the back seat of his SUV, when Taylor Greene was able to launch his messages comparing the former president with Nelson Mandela and with Jesus Christ“arrested and persecuted by powerful corrupt governments.”
“It’s a show that feeds on itself,” described the scene Robin, a New York graphic designer, Jewish and a resident of the Lower East Sidewho voted for Alvin Bragg, the Democratic prosecutor who has convinced a grand jury to indict Trump and who was siding with the president’s defenders to try to argue the merits of even a former president sitting on justice .
He spoke without much success with a group of women, dressed in all the paraphernalia of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, who had come from Long Island, a Republican stronghold in New York, and assured that what is lived today in New York is a misfortune”, “disgusting”, “un-American”. “If they can do it to him, they can do it to us,” said Christine, one of the women, who assured that the charges are “inflated”, also defended that Trump “is doing this for us” and replicated the messages of the former president and 2014 candidate against prosecutor Bragg and defining what happens as “absolutely political persecution.” “Where are the charges against Hillary Clinton for his emails, against Hunter Biden, against Nancy Pelosi?”, he asked.
attempts at racism
When Christine was asked about the assault on the Capitol and the fears that it triggered of violence to defend Trump, she sought to distance herself from that moment. “We are just waving flags, we go without masks, it is all very peaceful,” she defended. But minutes later, just as Santos was arriving, an altercation broke out between a pro-Trump protester and a black television cameraman. And one of the women from the Long Island group snapped at the cameraman, not caring that the rest of the press was filming: “we don’t want your kind here”. There are expressions that aren’t even racist dog whistles.
Related news
There have been other moments of tense crossovers, bawdy word exchanges, even some skirmish in which the police intervened. But for many of those gathered in the square who are not Trump supporters, it was a party time. “We have come not to demonstrate, but to celebrate,” they said Nadine Sealer y Karen, two of the first to arrive this morning. “This indictment may be the first step,” Karen said. “Normally the white rich men They are not accountable to the courts. And you have to remember that this is a very young country, and I’m not saying that this experiment is going to work, but it’s that first step.”
With a banner that said directly “Fuck Trump” (fuck Trump), Karen was also convinced that they would end up being more in the square. As she assures that they are more at the polls. “There are people who think about not coming today or not going out so as not to give oxygen to the Trump supporters, so that they do not gain attention. But that’s how Hitler came to power. We have already shown that we do not have fear. And we definitely have the numbers.”