In liberal Richmond, Calif., Julie Freestone has spent much of her retirement making common cause with people who share her “ongoing sense of outrage” about Donald Trump. For years, she says, she’s wanted Trump to “go to prison for the rest of his life,” whether for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election result or his role in fomenting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Yet after each investigation and impeachment, she’s watched Trump walk away without consequences. Now, the criminal case unveiled against Trump in New York has renewed her hope. Might Tuesday’s charges reverse the pattern?
“Would I be happier if he were indicted for inciting an insurrection?” Freestone said. “Absolutely. But I keep telling myself, Al Capone was convicted on tax charges. This is a democracy and people have to be held accountable.”
Across the country, in Manheim, Pa., after seven years of doing anything he could to stop Trump, Charles Roehm has nothing left in his outrage bank. Two years ago, in a letter to his local newspaper, Roehm called for Trump to be jailed. He cited Trump’s role in the violent Jan. 6 insurrection and spelled out a litany of other potential crimes and unethical behavior.
“Why does everyone else have to follow the law, but Trump is still allowed to be in public?” Roehm wrote. “Our laws must be followed by everyone, without exception!”
Despite Trump’s indictment, Roehm, a veteran of 21 years in the Army and a retired accountant who lives in a strongly Republican county, says he’s lost faith in the justice system and politicians of every stripe.
“This guy gets away with it over and over,” he said. “I have irregular heartbeat and my medications were working fairly well until this whole thing with Trump. I’m depressed all the time. I’m totally disgusted by a legal system that let him go again and again because of his power.”
That sense of frustration or resignation — a nagging belief that Trump inevitably escapes accountability, that Lucy will yet again pull the football away just before Charlie Brown kicks it — is pervasive among those who have railed against the former president for years.
In a divided land, in the early stages of a divisive ex-president’s third campaign for the White House, these are the people who have stayed mostly sputtering mad about Trump for a solid seven years. Now, in this strange and historic moment — Trump called it “SURREAL” — they see him facing felony charges related not to Jan. 6 or to classified documents (though those may yet come), but to his payment of hush money to an adult-film star and a Playboy model. That has many Americans who have repeatedly seen Trump escape accountability watching this latest eruption of the Trump Show and wondering if they should celebrate, throw up their hands in exasperation or just give up.
These are the people who were appalled by Trump well before he was elected president, the voters who thought the “Access Hollywood” videotape of Trump boasting about sexually aggressive behavior with women would tank his candidacy.
Through his term in office and beyond, they cheered on investigators, predicted Trump’s fall, groaned over his every rhetorical explosion, styled themselves as “The Resistance” and worried that his presidency would dismantle the American system they cherished.
But at every turn, as Trump seemed to shake off numerous federal and state investigations into his policy choices, campaign tactics, corporate finances and personal behavior, as well as two impeachments, they were left with ever-dwindling expectations that he might be found responsible for what they viewed as crimes and abuses.
Then came Tuesday and pictures of a silent Trump, moving through a courthouse hallway, sitting at the defendant’s table in an ordinary Manhattan courtroom, headed for trial, even potential imprisonment. Among hardcore anti-Trumpers, this struck not so much as the moment they’d been waiting for as perhaps the beginning of one more chapter that could end in frustration.
Online, old memes resurfaced: Trump behind bars, Trump in an orange prison jumpsuit, Trump looking scared. A new image featured a mock newspaper headline from the year 2147: “We got Trump this time.”
Any triumphalism seemed halfhearted, and was immediately countered by replies like one from someone on Twitter using the name Wait Your Serious: “Y’all keep acting like this is the same as all the other times because then it will be way more hilarious when the rug is pulled from beneath you.”
Trump’s history has given his followers and opponents alike a sense that almost whatever is thrown at him, he’ll figure out an escape route.
“He’s been able to just run around and do and say whatever he wants,” said Michael Mackey, 28, who manages Wild West Comics and Games in Arlington, Tex. “People are just tired of it. They’re tired of him making us into a laughingstock.”
Sophia Downs, a 16-year-old junior at Albany High School in Albany, Calif., was initially excited by the news of Trump’s indictment: “I felt like, there’s cosmic justice and he’s finally getting what he deserves.”
But a darker feeling quickly took precedence: “As I could actually think about it, I’ve been wondering, will it actually change anything?” asked Downs, who is president of her school’s Feminist Club. “Will it prevent him from running again? I don’t know. I feel like everything has been so crazy the past few years, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still able to run. That’s the cynical part of me that’s lived through the past couple of years.”
She said her peers share “a general sense of hopelessness” from coming of age in the Trump era: “There’s a constant conflict between feeling this is hopeless and terrible and being wary, but also the idea that we have to push on and be hopeful because giving up is always going to lose.”
Deep, almost existential worry stretches not only through young minds but through voters of all ages who have spent the past seven years rooting for the justice system to take on Trump.
Yet after each investigation and impeachment, she’s watched Trump walk away without consequences. Now, the criminal case unveiled against Trump in New York has renewed her hope. Might Tuesday’s charges reverse the pattern?
“Would I be happier if he were indicted for inciting an insurrection?” Freestone said. “Absolutely. But I keep telling myself, Al Capone was convicted on tax charges. This is a democracy and people have to be held accountable.”
Across the country, in Manheim, Pa., after seven years of doing anything he could to stop Trump, Charles Roehm has nothing left in his outrage bank. Two years ago, in a letter to his local newspaper, Roehm called for Trump to be jailed. He cited Trump’s role in the violent Jan. 6 insurrection and spelled out a litany of other potential crimes and unethical behavior.
“Why does everyone else have to follow the law, but Trump is still allowed to be in public?” Roehm wrote. “Our laws must be followed by everyone, without exception!”
Despite Trump’s indictment, Roehm, a veteran of 21 years in the Army and a retired accountant who lives in a strongly Republican county, says he’s lost faith in the justice system and politicians of every stripe.
“This guy gets away with it over and over,” he said. “I have irregular heartbeat and my medications were working fairly well until this whole thing with Trump. I’m depressed all the time. I’m totally disgusted by a legal system that let him go again and again because of his power.”
That sense of frustration or resignation — a nagging belief that Trump inevitably escapes accountability, that Lucy will yet again pull the football away just before Charlie Brown kicks it — is pervasive among those who have railed against the former president for years.
In a divided land, in the early stages of a divisive ex-president’s third campaign for the White House, these are the people who have stayed mostly sputtering mad about Trump for a solid seven years. Now, in this strange and historic moment — Trump called it “SURREAL” — they see him facing felony charges related not to Jan. 6 or to classified documents (though those may yet come), but to his payment of hush money to an adult-film star and a Playboy model. That has many Americans who have repeatedly seen Trump escape accountability watching this latest eruption of the Trump Show and wondering if they should celebrate, throw up their hands in exasperation or just give up.
These are the people who were appalled by Trump well before he was elected president, the voters who thought the “Access Hollywood” videotape of Trump boasting about sexually aggressive behavior with women would tank his candidacy.
Through his term in office and beyond, they cheered on investigators, predicted Trump’s fall, groaned over his every rhetorical explosion, styled themselves as “The Resistance” and worried that his presidency would dismantle the American system they cherished.
But at every turn, as Trump seemed to shake off numerous federal and state investigations into his policy choices, campaign tactics, corporate finances and personal behavior, as well as two impeachments, they were left with ever-dwindling expectations that he might be found responsible for what they viewed as crimes and abuses.
Then came Tuesday and pictures of a silent Trump, moving through a courthouse hallway, sitting at the defendant’s table in an ordinary Manhattan courtroom, headed for trial, even potential imprisonment. Among hardcore anti-Trumpers, this struck not so much as the moment they’d been waiting for as perhaps the beginning of one more chapter that could end in frustration.
Online, old memes resurfaced: Trump behind bars, Trump in an orange prison jumpsuit, Trump looking scared. A new image featured a mock newspaper headline from the year 2147: “We got Trump this time.”
Any triumphalism seemed halfhearted, and was immediately countered by replies like one from someone on Twitter using the name Wait Your Serious: “Y’all keep acting like this is the same as all the other times because then it will be way more hilarious when the rug is pulled from beneath you.”
Trump’s history has given his followers and opponents alike a sense that almost whatever is thrown at him, he’ll figure out an escape route.
“He’s been able to just run around and do and say whatever he wants,” said Michael Mackey, 28, who manages Wild West Comics and Games in Arlington, Tex. “People are just tired of it. They’re tired of him making us into a laughingstock.”
Sophia Downs, a 16-year-old junior at Albany High School in Albany, Calif., was initially excited by the news of Trump’s indictment: “I felt like, there’s cosmic justice and he’s finally getting what he deserves.”
But a darker feeling quickly took precedence: “As I could actually think about it, I’ve been wondering, will it actually change anything?” asked Downs, who is president of her school’s Feminist Club. “Will it prevent him from running again? I don’t know. I feel like everything has been so crazy the past few years, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still able to run. That’s the cynical part of me that’s lived through the past couple of years.”
She said her peers share “a general sense of hopelessness” from coming of age in the Trump era: “There’s a constant conflict between feeling this is hopeless and terrible and being wary, but also the idea that we have to push on and be hopeful because giving up is always going to lose.”
Deep, almost existential worry stretches not only through young minds but through voters of all ages who have spent the past seven years rooting for the justice system to take on Trump.
