Donald Trump arraignment: US history or just another day in court?

Hundreds of members of the news media are standing in front of Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building on Tuesday, cordoned off in gated pens, waiting for Donald Trump. 

Some have waited in a sidewalk queue since early afternoon on Monday, spending the night to get a spot inside to witness the former president’s day in court. After all, this is a historic moment, we say. No U.S. president has ever been formally charged with a criminal act, and we are here to witness and report this moment in history.

Nearly eight years ago, the real estate mogul from Queens upended American politics, as well as political journalism, when he announced his candidacy at his Trump Tower in Midtown in 2015. The moment featured what is now the most iconic trip down an escalator in American history. The news media has been enthralled with Mr. Trump’s norm-breaking charisma ever since.

Few journalists then believed that announcement, with references to Mexicans bringing crime, drugs, and rape into the country, would lead to his being sworn into office as the country’s 45th president. Today, that president was read his Miranda rights.

Tuesday brought other firsts: a former president arrested, fingerprinted, and pleading not guilty to 34 felony counts related to falsifying documents. Mr. Trump did not speak to reporters either on his way in or out of the courtroom on the 15th floor.

Across the street, at Collect Pond Park, hundreds of protesters and counterprotesters are holding signs, chanting sometimes vulgar slogans – and invariably being interviewed by a member of the news media, who nearly match their numbers.

“Instead of getting the real criminals off the street and using all the resources to indict real criminals, they’re going after a former president and a candidate for presidency,” says Dion Cini, a software designer from the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, who is waving a 20-foot-high “Trump or Death” flag in the middle of the park. “I’m a white, conservative, heterosexual, Christian male – and I live in New York, so you can’t fool me!”

One woman wearing a red MAGA hat was burning sage as a cleansing ritual, she said, to ward off “toxic journalists” asking questions. 

“I’m here for ‘we the people’,” says a woman who would only give her name as QT Pie. “I’m here for we, not me. Trump is not even the most important person anymore, because it’s a movement, you know what I’m saying?” she says poking a finger into the chest of the person asking her questions. “It’s a very organic situation. Yeah, it’s for people who want freedom, and who want sovereignty, and who are sick and tired of [expletive] overtaxing.”

Few of his supporters talk about the circumstances of the charges against Mr. Trump, and it hardly feels like a political sex scandal, even though it includes an alleged encounter with a porn star named Stormy Daniels and $130,000 in hush money. The 34 fraud charges were elevated to felonies, because “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

At a press conference after the arraignment, Mr. Bragg said that the Manhattan D.A.’s office handles white-collar crime all the time in the world’s financial capital. Tuesday’s events demonstrated, he said, that “no amount of money, no amount of power” could alter the enduring American principle that “everyone stands equal in front of the law.”

While it is the oldest democracy, America had never before indicted a former leader before Tuesday. The only previous president ever arrested was Ulysses Grant, reportedly for speeding his horse-drawn carriage down D.C.’s streets. (The arresting officer had previously let the Civil War hero off with a warning.) Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment for Watergate, and his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.

Before he ran for president with the Make America Great Again slogan, Mr. Trump presented himself as something of a wealthy paramour and part of New York’s night life. He talked about threesomes on the radio, milled about in dressing rooms during the Miss Universe pageant, which he owned, and even talked about how he would date his daughter, Ivanka. During his first campaign, an “Access Hollywood” tape recorded him bragging about grabbing women’s genitals without their consent. 

These were never very important details for Shu Ping Lu, a freelance translator who has lived in Manhattan’s East Village for 32 years. 

“I believe he is receiving political persecution, there is nothing real crime about this,” says Ms. Lu, an immigrant from China who began to support Mr. Trump after the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. “It’s just a big beginning of destruction of America.”

A few dozen Trump supporters are chanting slogans back and forth with a few dozen Trump opponents. Without the throngs of journalists, however, a protest like this is in many ways a common occurrence in places like Manhattan’s Union Square, where political opinions and causes often draw a crowd in the summer and fall. 

Around 11 a.m, there’s a commotion on the east side of the small park across from the courthouse. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, has arrived, and a of throng cameras and credentials press forward to get a glimpse.

Representative Greene uses a bullhorn to speak, but few can hear her above the din of whistles and cowbells. “They’re taking our legal code, twisting it, manipulating it, and perverting it into something it was never meant to be,” she shouted. “Donald J. Trump is innocent. This is election interference. D.A. Alvin Bragg is nothing but a George Soros-funded tool. He is a tool for the Democrats to try to hijack the 2024 presidential election. This is a travesty!”

The controversial congresswoman stayed about 10 minutes before leaving amid a circle of security as protesters on both sides shouted slogans and pressed forward to get a glimpse. 

Maurice Symonette, head of a group called Blacks for Trump, has a queue of reporters waiting to speak to him. A radio host from Miami, he flew in with about a dozen members to attend the protest, and they are wearing matching white T-shirts. 

“I think what [District Attorney] Alvin Bragg and [New York Attorney General] Letitia James are doing is about as wicked as it gets,” says Mr. Symonette, whose ties to a cult and the so-called Boss Mansion have been reported by the South Florida press. “I’m the founder of this group, and I started it to defend Trump from the lie that he’s a racist. We’re here to back him up and defend him and everything he’s doing.”