For the second time, turnout for protests outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump was arraigned fell far below expectations. More than the first instance in April, though, this flop is a clear sign of weakness for the authoritarian populist. And it could indicate that Trump lacks the level of command over his base that’s needed to survive such an unprecedented political scandal.
After Trump’s first indictment in Manhattan over falsifying business records in order to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels, he called on his supporters to mobilize en masse and protest on his behalf. That didn’t happen. Though hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers voted for Trump in 2020, the pro-Trump crowd outside that arraignment numbered in the hundreds. MAGA superstar Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., headlined one rally, but when she spoke she was mostly surrounded by a sea of reporters, not supporters. More embarrassingly, her speech was barely audible, in part because a band of anti-Trump counterprotesters showed up and made a lot of noise.
Trump’s weak protest numbers are also more striking this time because his allies' calls to action were more intense.
Trump’s Miami arraignment indicates that his grip on his supporters remains loose, even more so than in New York. Ahead of the arraignment, Trump again called for protests and posted on Truth Social, “SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY.” Yet once again, turnout was underwhelming. Miami’s police chief said he was preparing for a crowd size between 5,000 and 50,000 people. As Trump surrendered to federal custody on Tuesday afternoon, estimates conveyed to me independently by three journalists outside the courthouse – from NBC News, The Daily Beast and Slate – put the crowd somewhere between 500 and 2,000 people at its peak. That’s a fraction of the lowest end of the city’s estimate.
There are a couple of reasons this showing makes Trump look worse than in New York.
First, Florida is home turf for Trump. The state is his adopted home and it has grown far redder during his rise to national influence; he is now deeply intertwined with Florida’s political culture. Over 5 million people voted for Trump in Florida in 2020, including over half a million in Miami-Dade County alone. And while New York also has plenty of Trump voters, publicly rallying on behalf of Trump is a more radical statement in Manhattan than it is in Florida. As Trump’s post-arraignment stop at a local restaurant showed, it isn’t hard to find huge numbers of unabashed supporters within a drivable distance of the Miami federal courthouse. Yet they could barely bother to show up.
Second, Trump’s weak protest numbers are also more striking this time because his allies’ calls to action were more intense. Allies like Arizona MAGA activist Kari Lake showed up. So did Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who promised in a speech in Miami to pardon Trump if he won the White House. Meanwhile, Republicans across the country framed the federal indictment over Trump’s willful retention of classified documents as a dangerous escalation by the Biden administration and even as an act of war. Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana issued a call to supporters that described the indictment and how he felt the right should respond to it in overtly martial language.
“We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye,” tweeted Rep. Andy Biggs, R.-Az. When Lake talked about the protests, she made sure to point out that many Trump supporters are NRA members.
Well, we heard a lot of fighting words, but we didn’t see a lot of soldiers. Trump’s arraignments could’ve been the first signs of a popular or militant pro-Trump uprising in response to the criminal justice system. Trump has framed his charges incessantly as a “witch hunt” that will ultimately result in persecution of his own supporters. “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way,” Trump said during a speech in Georgia on Saturday. Yet, the signs of such a mass rebellion so far are faint.
There are many possible factors at play. No matter how much Trump might be loved by his base, the stakes of, say, a purportedly stolen election likely seem bigger and easier to understand than an indictment of a political leader. It may have to do with post-Jan. 6 wariness of getting in trouble if a pro-Trump protest spirals out of control. Perhaps conspiracy theories about the government laying traps for peaceful protesters scared them out of showing up. Maybe Trump finally has exhausted his base with his constant hysteria, to the point that they may not fully appreciate how serious trouble he’s really in. And maybe some of them think that Trump really is starting to look too messy to deal with — or at least to drive over on a weekday to show support for. Whatever the reasons may be, Trump is looking weak. He might not be losing the support of his diehard followers, but he’s not moving them to take extraordinary steps on his behalf either.