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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Inside the New York courthouse the mood was tense and tedious as a dozen jurors deliberated over the fate of Donald Trump.
Outside the vibe was different. In a concrete park across the street a lone woman with a chipped tooth blew the Shofar, a ram’s horn typically sounded on the Jewish New Year. Or, as one passer-by called it, “the Jew horn”.
A man dressed in black and wearing the mien of the Reaper was toting a cross and a bell whose incessant toll added to lower Manhattan’s symphony of traffic and construction noise. Another man, dishevelled and wearing mismatched trainers, was holding a poster featuring members of the Trump administration who it said had been unfairly prosecuted. Another, in a Yankees’ cap, shouted: “There’s no crime for having an affair!”
Someone was playing a thumping MAGA rap song on a boom box. Tourists occasionally sauntered over to gawp and confirm their suspicion that New York was, in fact, insane.
All were among a whirl of carnivalesque characters that appear wherever the former president goes. They were at the Lower Manhattan courthouse to await the conclusion of Trump’s five week-long “hush money” trial.
Also there was Robert De Niro. The actor entered the maelstrom on Tuesday morning to stage a press conference in support of Joe Biden. It did not go well. The beloved New Yorker blasted Trump as a clown and buffoon, warning that he would never leave office if re-elected.
“You’re washed up!” a Trump-supporter heckled.
“Fuck you!” De Niro growled, sounding like one of the New York gangsters he has portrayed over the years.
“You’re a nobody. Your movies suck. You’re trash!” the man shouted back.
Gloria Allred did not fare much better. Late Wednesday afternoon the feminist attorney held her own press conference just outside the courthouse after a status hearing regarding Harvey Weinstein, whose 2020 rape conviction was overturned last month. (It says something about Trump’s magnitude that Weinstein, a one-time Hollywood king, was barely noticed. Same for Robert Menendez, the New Jersey senator whose corruption trial is playing out in a neighbouring court).
Allred was discussing Weinstein’s pending retrial. But she was competing with a torrent of abuse shouted by nearby Trump supporters, including a woman who invited Allred to perform certain lewd acts on her. A police drone buzzed overhead.
Allred soldiered on. But there was mayhem as officers rushed to the park, reporters in tow, after a report that someone had collapsed where protesters were skirmishing. It was a false alarm. Then came the distraction of Alina Habba, Trump’s glamorous lawyer, gliding by with a police escort on her way to a Fox News interview.
The MAGA Shofar-blower, it turns out, was not Jewish. Angie, a self-described “travelling evangelist”, had come from California to support the former president.
“The bible says they blew the trumpets, they shouted, and the walls came down,” she explained, standing just a few feet from the spot where a Florida man doused himself with petrol and set himself alight in the trial’s opening days.
Her assessment of Trump seemed to carry a broader meaning. “He’s not perfect,” Angie said. “He’s finding his way. I think we all are.”