The absence of anything resembling news complicates things significantly for on-the-ground reporting, but the assembled news anchors are doing their best. “Police are on high alert for—” an Australian woman says into the camera. Then she falters; then she starts again. The situation behind her can’t be helping her concentration; a retired Marine is loudly dressing down the tiny remaining pocket of dejected, signless demonstrators. “This ain’t Trump’s world! This is God’s world, motherfucker! Fuck Trump! Fuck Trump! Fuck YOU!”
I first encountered the retired Marine on Monday evening, when members of the New York Young Republican Club gathered to make their grievances known. At 6:00 p.m., the park was chaos, a riotous crush of bodies jockeying to bring their message to the world. Unfortunately for the young Republicans of New York, those bodies belonged not to furious young conservatives but the media. At least 200 of them swarmed the few protesters present, microphones outstretched, maneuvering in vain to find a camera angle that captured the demonstrators without a thousand obvious press members standing in the background.
Toward the edge of the fray, an earnest man in a brown coat with a hand-lettered sign with three lines that read “Alvin Bragg / Releasing The Violent / Prosecuting Political Enemies” spoke to one reporter after another, each circling and waiting for the crew in front to finish before they pounced. Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, his words ran out. “I’m sorry,” he said after a few seconds. “I’ve been talking for hours. I’ve been here since noon.” He tried feebly to extricate himself, but the woman currently interviewing him begged him to answer just one more question. And so it went, crew after crew: a special kind of hell.
A half-hour later, the starving media had figured out a more orderly formation for feeding. A sardine-packed semicircle pressed relentlessly into the tiny cohort of Young Republicans who had answered Trump’s call to PROTEST and TAKE OUR NATION BACK. The club’s leadership delivered speeches into a bouquet of microphones. I could hear none of it, on account of the soundproofing crush of press bodies and also the retired Marine, who wanted them to leave. “You should go to Buffalo Wild Wings!” he shouted in a booming voice doubtless crafted through decades of military service. “Donald Trump don’t even know your name. Fuck outta here. Fuck Trump. Fuck you!”
New York City is uniquely unsuited to a MAGA rally. Its citizens infamously have no time for bullshit, and conservative news stories about a murder on every street corner and a needle in every arm have terrified many Patriots with long histories of Facebook posts regarding a certain Tree of Liberty and its thirst for patriot and tyrant blood. The city is large, it’s loud, and people are spectacularly good at minding their own business. It’s a hard place to impress. (...)
This is what happens when you tell your supporters to rally for you and then they get arrested en masse and then you leave office without pardoning them. All of Trump’s boldest soldiers are in jail, headed to jail, or terrified of going to jail. Much of the hard-core alt-right remembers and is vocally bitter about this, but everyone else has largely reached an undeclared yet firm position on the subject. We’ll support you, Mr President, but don’t expect us to show up for you anymore.
by Laura Jadeed, TNR | Read more:
Image: Fatih Atkas
[ed. Sorry... can't help it. Sometimes you just need a good laugh.]
