![]() The pleasant barman on duty, who spoke with an Irish lilt, obliged. As the Trump motorcade arrived outside the Criminal Court building in Lower Manhattan, the TV screen perched above the saloon bar was showing a baseball game until one drinker – okay, it was me - suggested switching to live coverage of Trump’s “historic” arraignment.ĭonald Trump soaks up the adulation during an event at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Tuesday. That’s not how it went down at PJ Clarke’s. “While no one wants to be indicted,” Baker wrote, “Mr Trump in one sense finds himself exactly where he wants to be – in the centre ring of the circus, with all the spotlight on him.” Channelling Forrest Gump – “hello, my name’s Forrest Gump people call me Forrest Gump” – the paper’s chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, repeated that fact twice in the first paragraph of his front-page story. The New York Times blazed the news of the first former US president facing criminal charges across its front page. ![]() “Donald has eluded accountability for so long and left so much destruction in his wake that there is a lot to take in,” she tweeted, with the hashtag #HappyIndictmentDay. Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece and author of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, branded his April 4 appearance “a historic day”, with “massive implications for this country”. As a one-time New York developer, reality TV presenter, self-confessed “pussy” grabber, and former – and once again aspiring – US president, Donald Trump features in many. There’s COVID-19, war in Ukraine, natural disasters blamed on climate change, record numbers of mass shootings in America, a post-2020 US presidential election insurrection, increased US-China tensions, and a Truth meltdown at Fox News. The two court appearances by a former US president reflect crisis-prone times. ![]() Trump’s legal team entered the same pleas 70 days later in Miami where he is facing 37 federal felony charges relating to classified documents allegedly stashed in the kitchen, bathroom and a storage room at his sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate, also in Florida. Helicopters hovered overhead as Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 state felony counts in New York relating to alleged falsifying of business records as part of a hush-money scheme to stifle damaging information about past affairs in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Against that a buoyant mood in many US parks, bars and middle-class suburbs reflects an American economic story that is turning positive, with lower inflation, low unemployment, continued growth and the recovery of many stocks.īut the mood was tense as hundreds of reporters, photographers and news cameras descended on the Manhattan Criminal Court building on a fresh, blue-sky April 4. Escalating gun crimes matched by threats of armed violence by Trump supporters venting their denial-laden politics of grievance have triggered an avalanche of warnings about “dark days ahead”. He faces mounting legal charges while leading the charge to secure the Republican nomination to contest the 2024 election.Īt PJ Clarke’s on that fateful April day, a high-powered New York attorney glanced at the five-second grab of Trump arriving at the courthouse and, between gulps of Guinness, lamented that foreigners must regard the US as a “joke”. More than 16 months before the next presidential election, the Trump saga is taking on a “schlock, horror, probe” quality – even by Trump’s standards. So, PJ Clarke’s, a 140-year-old saloon on the corner of Third Avenue and 55th Street in midtown Manhattan, seemed like a good locale, in a counter-intuitive kind of way, to savour the atmosphere as former US president Donald Trump fronted the Manhattan Criminal Court. Rock and Roll sensation Buddy Holly proposed marriage there on a first date and Detective Popeye Doyle (played by Gene Hackman) asked for a “nice, juicy PJ Clarke’s hamburger” in the movie The French Connection. It forms the backdrop in Truman Capote’s yarn about spending an afternoon with Marilyn Monroe, inspired Billy Wilder’s movie, The Lost Weekend, and features in Mad Men, the brilliant US TV drama series. ![]()
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