A sixty-something year old man with pasty, flaking skin, disheveled hair, and scoliotic posture chanted, with a lisp, “You guys are paid!” at a group of six black men in matching “Blacks for Trump” t-shirts. The crowd tightened around the shouting. Matching the elderly white man’s cadence, the black men chanted back: “Lucifer, Lucifer, Lucifer.” They seem to understand that all political conflict is ultimately theological.
This showdown took place on a Thursday afternoon on the corner of Third Street and Constitution in the shadow of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse. Former President Donald Trump was already inside, getting processed and arraigned in his third indictment.
I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about going down to the courthouse—I was on deadline for an upcoming piece in the print magazine and playing catch-up for the month I spent working abroad. But, I am a reporter—I had to go. On the Metro ride to the courthouse, I tried to find a good angle. What should I be paying extra attention to? What questions should I ask? Really, the only angle I could come up with was a bluntly honest one: I don’t care. Convince me to care.
As I walked southbound on shut-down Third Street, police vehicles and bright orange dump trucks lined what would be the northbound sidewalk. Photographers and cameramen clambered over one another and jammed branded step stools together for just the possibility of getting a shot of the former president entering the courthouse. It would take a lot more than heavy police and media presence to get me to reconsider my indifference.
It was more than an hour before the former president’s scheduled arraignment, and it would be at least another 30 minutes before the president arrived; yet, every camera up and down Third Street remained fixed on the courthouse.
Behind the cameras, a single counter-protester. A young man of prototypical liberal appearance—once described by my former TAC colleague Declan Leary as “an S-shaped figure comprising a beergut and a concave chest, craning neck topped by a balding head”—donned an American flag tank top one size too small and held a sign that read “lock him up” with the H styled like the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign’s infamous logo. One passerby, a male tourist about the same age as the counter-protester who had to be pushing four bills, scoffed at the counter-protester and said “you’re a f****** loser.” It being early afternoon on a Thursday, I found it hard to disagree with him.
It wasn't just a media circus. I made my way past the line of camera crews to the corner of Third Street and Constitution where the real fun was happening. On the northbound side of the intersection stood about fifty liberal protesters, holding signs that read “no one is above the law” and the other platitudes left-wingers have dusted off to use in favor of the Trump indictments. An overwhelming majority were retirees—some of them looked like they haven’t moved from that corner since the Vietnam War. Others were younger and sported shirts from the liberal nonprofit they either volunteered or worked for.
Across the street, in a small, triangular patch of green created by the meeting of Third Street, Constitution, and Pennsylvania, stood another hundred people. The pro-Trump side gathered around an elevated platform. Atop the platform, a grubby man dressed in a rumpled, home-made Continental Army officer’s uniform spoke into a microphone between two massive speakers. The officer’s foot soldiers, as unkempt as their leader, flanked the platform and waved flags that said “Trump 2024” and “Let’s Go Brandon.” Eventually, a rapper got on stage and performed a song he wrote titled “Joe Biden Didn't Build Back Better.”
Other protesters were more representative of the Trump-base rank and file—MAGA-hat wearing tourists with a “when in Rome” attitude. Some clearly worked in the conservative movement or for Republicans on the Hill, sneaking out of the office for a little while to offer the former president some support and just check out what was going on. And, of course, there were the aforementioned “Blacks for Trump.”
Another hundred or so onlookers weren’t connected to either the protest or the counter-protest, but could also be divided into two camps. The first group of the unaffiliated, about fifty in number, was a freak show. I had no idea if they even knew why people were gathering outside of the courthouse. One man wore a skirt and devil horns. He held a large, wooden wizard staff as a sign that read, “Make America’s penis great again with a foreskin!” hung around his neck. Street-dwelling drug addicts had heated debates with figments of their imaginations. Another man wore a Trump mask and just mimed a Trump impression without saying a word. The other unaffiliated group, though they probably had their personal leanings, were just there to watch.
The scene at the courthouse, between the frumpiness, freak-show, and the fact that neither side of the protest even realized when the former president arrived and departed, did little to change my indifference. The size of the crowds were not inspiring either. In total, media personnel probably outnumbered protesters and counter-protesters three to one.
I ran into Joel Valdez, vice chairman of communications for the Washington, D.C., Young Republicans. I asked Joel about the circus. “I think the American people clearly see that this is a political sideshow,” Valdez said. “So I don’t think there's going to be too much fanfare for what we know is a phony process.”
I asked Valdez how he’d rank this indictment among the others, and all the rest Trump has been subjected to over the years. “It probably would have one of the more severe consequences, seeing that it criminalizes activity protected by First Amendment rights afforded by the Constitution,” Valdez told me. “It’s a terrible situation for Jack Smith to be putting the country through this. He has a track record of unleashing witch hunts not just towards Republicans, but towards his political enemies in general, and losing.”
Maybe I shouldn’t say “I don’t care.”
I certainly care that the former president is getting indicted (again) in a brazen attempt to bar him from ever returning to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And, as Valdez suggested, one wonders what precedent a conviction on these charges in D.C. might set.
It is more accurate to say that indictments against Trump no longer change much politically. The first was galvanizing, but created the expectation that more would follow. And, if Trump is the nominee, most know whom they are voting for come November 2024—not even a conviction could change that in a Biden versus Trump rematch. There are not going to be many “undecided” voters.
Attorney Andrew Kloster also came down to the courthouse to watch the circus. “There are people in the country who are solidly in Trump’s camp that are only more enthusiastic and donate more when this happens,” he said. That is true—the campaign fundraising data bears this out—and seems to cut against my thesis that people don’t really care.
But the influx of cash Trump’s campaign gets every time he’s summoned for another arraignment hardly comes from folks who are just waking up to the fact that the left is out to get the former president. Another indictment doesn’t actually change their political outlook at all.
These Trump supporters already believed the establishment would do anything to stop Trump. They already believe the establishment rigs the system, whether the justice system or the election system, against Trump, and that it successfully did so in 2020. And they have long expected the establishment would try to put the former president behind bars.
So they don’t care about this indictment, or any other indictments that may follow for that matter. What they do care about, however, is how Republicans plan to use the force of government in the future. That the government has a monopoly on force has become abundantly clear to them. That force is used to reward friends and punish enemies, to champion good and vanquish evil.
“The interesting thing to me is that the legal theory on obstruction of an official proceeding and things like that can now apply to Democrat career officials advising Biden appointees not to comply with congressional oversight requests,” Kloster said. “They’re being really aggressive with the statutes, and it’ll be really funny if there's a Republican A.G. in 2025 that takes their legal theory, doesn’t extend it any further, and then applies it fairly. And I think when the shoe is on the other foot, if that ever happens, which it rarely does, I think they'll be very sorry.”
Trump supporters detest that the government is being weaponized against their friends, whether it be Donald Trump or the Little Sisters of the Poor. But they’re waiting to see what Republicans are going to do to their enemies. For the meantime, they are glad that House Republicans have established a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. But they don’t believe the government can be de-weaponized—because it can’t.