This is America

Peter Lalor lands in the stormy zoo of US political history

Artwork by Fisher Classics

Pete and Kymba from Mix94.5 Perth thought it pretty funny that I was spending my first day in New York hanging around a courthouse, but when you’ve got the opportunity to be there when Donald Trump went down, what are you going to do?

Maybe I’ll visit the Statue of Liberty tomorrow. I’ll take flowers and a bottle of champagne for the old girl. Surely she’d be up for a quiet drink after a day like this.

I’ll admit it is a little sad to spend the first day here doing this, but there was no chance I was doing anything thing else on May 30, 2024. I’m a scorpion. It’s what I do. Frogs can have a holiday.

I’d flown in from Trinidad and arrived in a heavy rain storm in the early hours of the morning. Checked into a hotel that sits right in the middle of the block between the Empire State and Flatiron buildings. There’s a lovely view of an apartment wall from my steampunk room that costs about as much a night as it did to buy my first home in Sydney. Got a piece of pizza pie and a beer at a brightly lit place on 5^th at 2am and went to bed contact stoned from the pungent fog that’s licked its tongue into every corner and lingers on every puddled pavement of modern America.

If I’m meandering right now it might be the contact, but is probably because I’ve accidentally boarded an express train to Coney Island rather than the one uptown and am trying to pretend it has not happened.

FML _ as the kids say.

I’d got the (right) train downtown to the courthouse (did it easy and it is probably there that I got a bit cocky about my subway skills) around lunch time and set about circumnavigating the scene.

The court itself is on Centre St but that’s no place for civilians. The police have blocked off the footpaths. The press have dug themselves into fortified strongholds all along the front of the building and down the adjoining streets.

In an adjoining “park”, ringed and then divided by barricades, the two sides of America’s politics gather like animals in a zoo.

The Trump mob certainly outnumbered his detractors but it was a sad little turn out. Maybe a 100 people or 200 at a stretch. The Trumpists came in all colours, but share a unanimous red-faced anger at the way their man is being treated. A subgroup had signs and shirts that referred to him as Father Teresa. A man in the image of Calcutta’s nun. “Free Father Teresa” it said on one banner. There were Fuck Biden shirts to counter the Fuck Trump shirts across the pond. Some had full Trump kit, their oufits bearing his name and image all the way from cap to shoes.

But, to be honest, this was a slightly less colourful show than those MAGA conventions you see on television. No blokes with bison hats or women with Trump tattoos on their tits.

The anti Trump contingent were just as eccentric as their opposition Thursday and just as angry.

One brave little woman strode into the mob opposite with her Fuck Trump T shirt and signs denouncing the former president in her raised hands. His supporters swooped and ripped them up, but she produced new ones. It happened a few times and a scuffle developed, but she kept her cool as the police descended and a hot breathed mob denounced her. She was, among other things, a transgender feminist, a traitor and scum. One enraged man spat over and over that she was nothing but a bitch.

It was just like the scenes on social media. And soon was. What else was I going to do? Unlikely it made the network news.

She was tiny and she held her nerve. The police protected her as she gathered the scattered placards.

The man who attacked her, constantly announced himself as proudly gay and constantly devoted to Donald. Claiming Trump had appointed some openly gay man to some office or other he claimed Obama was never so supportive. He later gave a speech denouncing Robert De Niro who had appeared in the vicinity the day before. He did not like Bobby.

It was all rather performative. This park area was filled with the next rung of journalists, those not affiliated with the big networks who were up on their temporary scaffolding. Every time a New York argument broke out between two people they turned on their cameras. Fire up the outrage machine. Fuck you. No, fuck you. There were nine reporters for anyone with an opinion and 90 when the verdict came down and the cavalcade left. All those fuck yous amplified and broadcast by the networks keen for some more colour.

Someone told me it was in this park that the Max Azzarello set fire to himself a month or so back. It was hard to imagine this nonsense could be so serious. A little sobering too. Symbolic of the fact this shit has serious consequences.

I wandered between the bickering packs for a few hours then withdrew believing it was going to take some time for the jury to make a decision as they’d asked some complex questions of the judge earlier in the day.

I’d retired to a dive bar to work on a piece about cricket in New York when my mate, Dino, who lives in LA and always has the television tuned to the news, messaged to say get back down to the courthouse. Trump was guilty of all 34 charges. I left the beer and got out of there as fast as I could. Surely it was going to kick off.

I was there quickly (the subway and me in harmony) and surprised to see that all was quiet in that small concert park. What was going on here? I thought the Trump supporters would be enraged? I was expecting anger and pushing and shoving and shouting and all that palaver but it was quieter than before.

The Trump supporters had, mostly, gone home. Their side of the park slowly filled with New Yorkers who weren’t celebrating, but appeared to have turned out as if to assert that some order has returned to their country and city, that the man who lives among them but is not of them has at least been held to account for something.

For what it was worth.

The odd argument broke out with the handful of Trump supporters who remained or showed up. One walked fast among them proclaiming that today was the day Trump had won the 2024 election. A fat man from central casting, complete with a red Trump cap, held his ground and argued at length with a gang of anti Trumpists.

If you had an opinion someone wanted to hear from you. If someone held forth a pack of media animals gathered in concentric rings with their phones and cameras and microphones and lust for something, anything, to colour the scene.

That might almost tell us something about how America got to where it is in the first place.

That said, if this was Miami and not New York the reaction may have been a hell of a lot different. Trump’s Americans live a long, long way from Manhattan, like John Howard’s Australians they were not to be found far from the centre of such cities.

So, the New York police stood more relaxed than they had been earlier in the day. Like the citizens, the cops are a performance piece. One lass, with false eyelashes and bright red lipstick, sported a pair of pink handcuffs on her belt. “If you want to find out I can show you,” she said with a smile when someone asked her if they were real. She was magnificent.

And I took photos and tweeted updates because being a news journalist is deep in my bones and there’s nothing I like more than being on the scene of a big story. Even when it shapes up to be a rather chilled evening like this one.

Pete and Kymba’s keen eyed producer, Kerrod, made contact and wanted me to phone in so I did.

Talk about a bus driver’s holiday. We had a laugh. As you must on FM radio. “I did but see him passing by,” I told them. It was true, the motorcade had been glimpsed departing two blocks away.

That bloke that was calling the little lady a bitch showed back up later.

By the way, I got off that express train and somehow got back close to the Ace Hotel where I’m staying, weaved my way up Broadway and am now back at the John Doe Bar waiting on a hamburger and it is a lot noisier that the scenes downtown.

It just arrived. I’ll be back after this break _ as they say on Cricket Et Al …

Not a bad burger.

That bloke that called the little lady a bitch with so much venom returned before I’d left the court. He was broken. Sad day for America, he said. Held forth for a while about the unfairness of it all but it was pushing 7pm and the news crews had most of what they said.

Someone tells me that the Harvey Weinstein appeal was on across the road yesterday, but it is time to go and get on the wrong train.

Meanwhile, back in John Doe’s they’re playing the Star Spangled Banner at high volume. They’re not patriots so much as it turns out there is one big game of Hockey on tonight. It is Game 5 of. The NHL East Conference Finals, the New York Rangers are playing the Florida Panthers.

Seems appropriate.

God I love this city.

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