On a warm spring afternoon in New York City, police barricades separated vocal pro-Trump protesters and anti-Trump protesters in a small park near the courthouse where former President Donald Trump was put on trial, with NYPD officers standing in the middle as some demonstrators yelled insults and swear words each other.
On a side filled with hundreds of supporters of the former president this afternoon, a man played the violin as he stood next to a protester holding a sign that read, “Trump didn’t start any wars!”
“Lock him up!” read a sign carried by one protester on the other side. “Trump is the definition of debauchery,” read another caption.
A naked cowboy singing guitarist who usually poses with tourists in Times Square in his underpants stopped to show his support for the former president. He was photographed with supporters of the former president.
Denise Humora, a 62-year-old fitness instructor from Manhattan, held up a small banner reading “45” for the former president.
“Leave that man alone,” said Humora, a lifelong Democrat and former Bernie Sanders supporter who turned to Trump after Sanders’ presidential bid failed.
“This should not happen to any president,” she said. “Not Obama. Not Clinton. Not Trump. It’s outrageous. He doesn’t belong in this building.”
Another Trump supporter, Florida Rep. Anthony Sabatini, a Republican running for Congress, said he traveled to New York to protest, leaving his wife and their 16-day-old baby in the Sunshine State.
Sabatini, who called for a halt to FBI funding after the agency ransacked the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home, said he believes the indictment does help Trump’s presidential campaign.
“I think what the DA has done is put more emphasis on Donald Trump and his message, more than ever before,” he said. “They just amplified it, probably ten times.”
On the anti-Trump side of the barricade, one protester wore a Trump mask and prison overalls. Some were banging bells and drums, and marijuana smoke hung in the air.
Community activist David Galarza Santa held up a roll of paper towels in memory of the day Trump visited Puerto Rico and threw rolls of paper towels at Hurricane Maria survivors.
“Now he can use it to dry his crocodile tears,” Galarza Santa said of Trump.