The man hit hardest by the arrest and arraignment of Donald Trump, I was told outside the Manhattan district attorney’s office, was not the former president, who now faces more than 30 felony charges connected to the hush money payments he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. The biggest loser, rather, was Ron DeSantis.
That was the consensus shared by a scrum of Trump supporters who assembled Tuesday in a park across from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse where Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.
There is simply no air left for the governor of Florida, argued New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax, whose organization coordinated the protest in Collect Pond Park. “This has locked Trump in for the primary,” he told me, noting that, as in 2016, Trump has again vastly overshadowed his Republican rivals. “And DeSantis is tanking—you can see his supporters growing more hysterical by the day.”
Despite its extraordinary rallying point, the protest was largely uneventful, thanks in large part to the scores of uniformed police who split the park into two opposing pens: the south side for Trump supporters and the north for counter-protesters. Tensions peaked during a brief speech by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the event’s headlining speaker and one of the few congressional Republicans to take up Trump’s call to “protest” his indictment. (Representative George Santos was also outside the courthouse, surrounded by reporters.) Greene’s remarks were eventually drowned out by counter-protesters armed with whistles, bells, and drums—which she blamed on New York mayor Eric Adams. “You send your henchmen down here to commit assault against people by making loud noises,” she said of Adams, before accusing Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney prosecuting the Trump case, of conspiring to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.
Cathy Flannigan, a 60-year-old Long Island conservative, said that the indictment has “galvanized” Trump’s base, resolidified his hold over the GOP, and pulled more moderate Americans “toward the right.” As a gesture of Republican solidarity, Flannigan urged Trump’s primary competition, including DeSantis, to “drop out and get behind Trump.” Benjamin Geller, a local Republican official who attended the Tuesday protest, echoed that sentiment, arguing that Trump’s polling lead over DeSantis, his sole viable primary opponent, has only grown since the indictment news first broke. “And I think it’s only going to get higher over time because this is going to energize the base,” he said.
At the moment, the Republican establishment has yet to circle their wagons around Trump. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, a presidential hopeful, used this week’s commotion to make a splashy, media-friendly entrance into the race. “For the sake of the office,” he urged, Trump should drop out and take his “sideshow” with him. Many of Trump’s primary rivals have lobbed similar criticisms, suggesting that the GOP is in dire need of new blood.
That seems increasingly unlikely as Trump sucks more and more oxygen from his opponents. He garnered wall-to-wall news coverage this week that felt strikingly reminiscent of 2016. Networks like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News served around-the-clock shots of his every move, even psychologizing his hand gestures and facial expressions.
DeSantis, for his part, has tried to capitalize on the Trump indictment, quipping last week that he doesn’t know anything about “paying hush money to a porn star”—which was a “cheap shot,” according to Wax. “DeSantis lacks a certain social IQ,” Wax said. “You don’t go after someone when they just got into a car accident.”
After the Florida governor’s initial comment was denounced by some in conservative media, the governor attempted to play clean up by vowing that he would not extradite Trump from his Palm Beach resort had the ex-president refused to show in court. (Of course, the chances of that scenario actually playing out were slim to none.)
Caleb Ecarma
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