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Tuesday, August 29, 2023 10:10:51 PM
Along Trump’s journey to jail, Black Atlanta residents mix outrage with pride
"Judge Sets Trial Date in March for Trump’s Federal Election Case
[...]Judge warns Trump not to threaten witnesses in 2020 election subversion case"
The former president’s motorcade passed through neighborhoods with a recurring role in America’s civil rights struggle
By Emmanuel Felton
,
Fenit Nirappil and Camila DeChalus
August 28, 2023 at 4:58 p.m. EDT
Bystanders gather near the intersection of Lowery and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards in Atlanta as former president Donald Trump rides in a motorcade while traveling from the Fulton County Jail on Thursday. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
All links
ATLANTA — Up and down Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard, Atlantans stopped what they were doing to witness history coming again to their community.
Former president Donald Trump was on his way to surrender on charges of having conspired to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. His motorcade’s route from Atlanta’s airport to the Fulton County Jail Thursday evening took him through the heart of predominantly Black neighborhoods with a recurring role in the nation’s civil rights struggle.
He passed Lovell Riddle, 39, at the corner of Lowery and TP Burruss Senior Drive, both named, like many of the streets in the area, for local Black pastors.
“I see them bringing people to Rice Street every day,” said Riddle, using the colloquial name for the Atlanta jail. “But this was like a big show, this was a circus. He had this big police escort and all of that. If it were me or any other Black man accused of what he is accused of, we would have already been under the jail and they would have thrown the keys away.”
[Insert: Too much unwarranted privilege simply creates more unnecessary dissension.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172716019]
In interviews with The Washington Post, the people who lined the route grappled with putting Thursday’s events in the context of the community’s long and fraught history. To some, the sight of Trump being forced to submit to the booking process felt like a victory in the continuing battle over whether Black voters get an equal say. His efforts to “find” enough fraudulent votes to overturn the election, these people said, had felt like an attempted disenfranchisement that harked back to the Jim Crow era.
2:43 - Former President Donald Trump's supporters and protestors gathered at the Fulton County jail
on Aug. 24, ahead of Trump's surrender. (Video: The Washington Post)
Others expressed sympathy for the former president as he followed the well-worn path from the neighborhood to the county jail, seeing parallels between his situation and what they described as the over-criminalization of Black communities around the country. Some said they support Trump and believe the charges against him will win him votes in 2024.
[It's interesting how many put the crimes committed aside for Trump,
and substitute so many other rationals in Trump's favor. Is unfortunate.]
And for yet others, it all amounted to an expensive spectacle that would do little to fix the problems facing a once-thriving middle class community that now has some of the highest poverty and crime rates in the city.
Race is a subtext that runs through the case against Trump.
The former president’s oft-repeated but baseless contention that the election was stolen is built on his allegations of widespread vote-rigging in cities with large Black populations .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2020/11/20/f0d11954-2b71-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_10 .. such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta.
During a call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, Trump repeatedly pressed the state’s top election official to focus on metro Atlanta’s Fulton County, where he alleged without evidence that votes had been “shredded” and “dumped.”
“You will find you will be at 11,779 within minutes because Fulton County is totally corrupt,” Trump said, referring to the statewide margin of his loss to Joe Biden .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_12 .
Trump’s campaign spread a false narrative that two Black Fulton County election workers .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/ruby-freeman-shaye-moss-jan6-testimony/?itid=lk_inline_manual_14 — Ruby Freeman and her adult daughter Shaye Moss — had been key to the fraud. Trump has repeatedly attacked Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/31/willis-fbi-help-trump-comments/?itid=lk_inline_manual_14 , who brought the charges against him and is Black, as “so racist.”
Carousel
The areas that Trump traveled through Thursday are deeply intertwined with America’s record of racial strife and discrimination. Even the street signs reflect the connection: Lowery Boulevard, named for the Atlanta-based Black minister and civil rights advocate who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr., was until 2001 named for a Confederate general.
On Trump’s way down Lowery to the jail, he passed Morehouse College, the historically Black institution that is King’s alma mater; the Bankhead neighborhood, where rappers T.I. and Lil Nas X grew up and found inspiration; and the English Avenue community, where the local elementary school was dynamited during the contentious integration of the city’s public schools.
[Image of route]
Before the motorcade came through, residents and office workers rushed to get spots on sidewalks, stoops and balconies. Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, later recounted on Newsmax that he had been greeted by “tremendous crowds in Atlanta that were so friendly.” Some cellphone videos that ricocheted around social media showed a different reaction, with people shouting obscenities or making crude gestures as the convoy sped by.
Those who were there suggest the response was more complicated, with Trump’s unexpected arrival — and rapid departure — prompting feelings of catharsis and anger, awe and disgust, indignance and pride.
Former president Donald Trump rides in a motorcade as he travels from the airport to the Fulton County Jail Thursday in Atlanta. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
People watch the motorcade from the front porch of a home near the intersection of Mayson Turner Road and Lowery Boulevard. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
People gather near the intersection of Lowery and Boone boulevards to watch the motorcade. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
An improvised parade
Coryn Lima, a 20-year-old student at Georgia State University, was walking home from his aunt’s house when he noticed the commotion. Officials hadn’t announced the motorcade’s route in advance, but police cordoning off a two-mile stretch of Lowery Boulevard was a sure sign.
Trump rides through Fulton County after his surrender
1:23 Former President Donald Trump's motorcade drove through Fulton County, Ga., on Aug. 24,
after his surrender to election interference charges. (Video: The Washington Post)
As news spread that Trump was coming through on his way to the jail, where he would be fingerprinted and required to take a mug shot, the neighborhood took on a carnival air. Lima said his neighbors ran out of their homes with their kids to grab a spot, like they might for a parade. There were also people he didn’t recognize: Some had signs supporting Trump, others came with profanity-laced posters denouncing him.
The moment came and went with a flash, Lima said, with Trump’s motorcade, which consisted of more than a dozen cars, moving down the street “extremely fast.” But Lima said it had still been “cathartic.”
“From what I’ve been told by people around my age, Trump is like a supervillain,” Lima said. “And he’s finally getting caught for all of his supervillain crimes.”
Lima lives in a heavily Democratic community. President Biden won 90 percent or more of the vote in the precincts along this stretch of Lowery — a landslide, but results that reflected a small improvement for Trump compared with 2016. Lima said he believes there is enough evidence to convict Trump. But he isn’t convinced that the former president, who is the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024, will face any consequences.
Trump has been at the center of the U.S. political conversation for just about as long as Lima has been aware of politics, and Lima said he just doesn’t know what to expect next. Seeing the former president face arrest was “pretty cool,” Lima said. But that doesn’t mean Trump will be leaving the scene any time soon.
Neighborhood neglect, within sight of new glitz
On most afternoons, you can find Lovell Riddle on the corner of Lowery and TP Burruss Senior Drive, where he and his brother sell baby turtles from small aquariums they set up on a folding table.
Riddle said Thursday evening was the first time he had ever seen a person that powerful come to his neighborhood, though he noted with a chuckle that Trump had come against his will.
Riddle doesn’t follow national politics much and rarely votes because no matter who has been in office, he said he feels his community has been neglected.
The number of people living on the streets had risen steadily in recent years as rent prices have climbed in and around the neighborhood, he said. Pointing out construction cranes building new luxury high rises as well as the billion-dollar Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the distance, Riddle said he was too concerned about how he would continue to afford to live in Atlanta to worry much about Trump.
But still, he said he is proud of what local officials are doing, including Willis, who he said “is showing what a strong Black woman can do.”
“Trump is a powerful man,” Riddle said. “I don’t think he’s going to go to jail. But I think this all makes the next politician think twice before calling up people and telling them to change this or that vote.”
People gather on the sidewalk on Lowery Boulevard. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Cheers from a Trump supporter
Denise Wells, 33, was cheering in front of a Boost Mobile store, where she is the manager, when Trump drove by. And she said that she wasn’t alone. Wells, who is Black, said there were several other young Black people out on Lowery applauding the former president, chanting slogans like “Free Donald Trump!”
Wells didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but said she started to support him during the covid-19 pandemic, when he signed bipartisan legislation that distributed stimulus checks and increased food stamp benefits. She said that money had a big impact in the Black community. She voted for Trump in 2020.
[There we have one obvious reason why Trump ever had the support he had. And one obvious reason why he still has the support he has. Maybe even millions know him only for the good he did for them and their neighbors. We tend to remember the good. No matter that Donald Duck would have done the same if he could. Millions would be totally unaware of the damage Trump did to America related to covid. See a well-worn post again:
John Oliver gets it right again. Trump fucked up on three basic facets of virus fighting - preparation, communication and coordination. On the question, Bush and Obama were on the mark. Trump lowered the drawbridge, increasing the probability any deadly airborne virus could hit America hard:
How Trump let coronavirus take over America
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164963124]
Wells said that she doesn’t think Trump did anything wrong during his campaign to overturn the election results.
“I feel like he won fair and square,” she said. Like many Trump supporters, Wells pointed to the size of his rallies as proof that the will of the people was behind the former president. She predicted the charges against Trump will ultimately backfire.
“More people are going to vote for him after this,” she said.
‘Why are y’all doing all of this?’
Pam Epps, 59, said she had mixed feelings watching Trump’s motorcade speed past her apartment. One emotion was pride in seeing a Black Atlanta leader taking on one of the world’s most powerful people.
“The DA did a good job, but really she’s just doing her job by taking on anyone, no matter how powerful they are,” she said. “Trump thinks he’s going to get away with it, but just wait and see.”
At the same time, Epps was annoyed by all the resources that were used to escort him.
“They had a truck that looked like an army tank, they had an ambulance, police were on every corner. That was outrageous to me,” Epps said. “He’s no longer the president. Why are y’all doing all of this? Let him just show up in a regular car like a regular person.”
“It’s crazy,” she added, “because when people in this neighborhood call the police, they are usually nowhere to be.”
Epps is a native of South Carolina who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 20 years, but often worries how much longer she will be able to afford to stay. She said government resources are badly needed in the neighborhood, where the sidewalks are strewn with trash and homeless people set up camp outside boarded-up abandoned houses. Despite the conditions, Epps said, her rent just keeps going up as the neighborhoods around hers gentrify.
Epps said that at the very least, Trump should be forced to pay a fine with the proceeds going to projects to improve the lives of Black Atlantans, whose votes she believes the former president tried to toss aside. She has a long list of priorities, but she said “the first thing they should do is fix that jail over there.”
The U.S. Justice Department this year announced an investigation .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/13/justice-dept-probe-atlanta-jail-after-homicides-insect-infestation/?itid=lk_inline_manual_56 .. of the conditions in the Fulton County Jail after reports that Lashawn Thompson, a 35-year-old Black man incarcerated there, had died covered in bedbugs and lice.
“That’s what it’s like for the regular people who have to go to that jail,” she said.
People crowd on the sidewalk to watch the motorcade. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Trump supporters cheer as a motorcade with Trump heads to the Fulton County Jail. (Alex Brandon/AP)
People react as the motorcade passes Bankhead Wingz on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A booking rich with comic irony
Adrienne Wilson camped out for hours on Thursday afternoon, braving the heat in a wide-brimmed hat and sleeveless dress to see Trump driven to jail.
The 40-year-old said she has watched Trump’s political career unfold with disgust, from the moment in his 2016 campaign when he mocked a reporter with a physical disability .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/25/trump-blasted-by-new-york-times-after-mocking-reporter-with-disability/?itid=lk_inline_manual_63 .. to his comments as president denigrating cities with large Black populations .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-race-record/2020/09/23/332b0b68-f10f-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_63 .. to his effort to overturn the election in 2020 .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/06/trumps-brazen-attempt-overturn-2020-election-timeline/?itid=lk_inline_manual_63 . She came out to cheer on a prosecution she hoped would hold him accountable and prevent other politicians from following the same path.
Wilson, a real estate agent who is originally from Delaware, moved to Atlanta more than a decade ago. Recently she bought a home on the city’s west side, not far from Lowery Boulevard. Wilson eagerly cast a ballot against Trump in 2020, helping Biden become the first Democrat .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2020/11/08/georgia-swing-state-democrats/?itid=lk_inline_manual_64 .. to win the presidential race in Georgia since 1992. Wilson was outraged when she heard a leaked recording of Trump trying to erase that victory and saw comic irony in what she witnessed on Thursday.
“He talks about Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, these predominantly Black communities, with such disgust and racial undertones of it being poor and Black and ghetto,” she said. “And here you are getting booked in the county jail in the middle of Atlanta by a Black prosecutor … I think it’s funny.”
She noted Trump was being processed at the same jail where the rapper Young Thug .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/13/young-thung-gunna-rap-lyrics-court/?itid=lk_inline_manual_67 .. has been held awaiting trial in a racketeering case. “He calls young Black men thugs, and now he’s going to the same jail as Young Thug because of the same prosecutor on the same charges,” she said.
But one thing Wilson wasn’t expecting to see on Thursday was the number of Black people who came out to back the former president. “To see them supporting him is mind-blowing,” she said.
Where’s the crime?
Jabari Crowder stepped outside his studio office for a break from film editing. He was puzzled at the sight of Secret Service vehicles, television cameras and cars being towed. Then he noticed three people wearing MAGA hats in an empty parking lot, and it clicked.
“He’s going through something that us in this community go through all the time,” said Crowder, a film producer who also runs an Atlanta nonprofit training aspiring filmmakers.
Crowder, 46, was well-acquainted with the jail. He said he had been booked there himself more than two decades ago on petty charges he said he didn’t recall and has picked up friends from the jail more recently. He remembers the process taking hours, but noted that the former president was in and out of the jail in less than 20 minutes.
Crowder, who has served time in prison for bank robbery and a parole violation, voted for Barack Obama and for Hillary Clinton. Then he warmed up to Trump. As president, Trump signed a criminal justice bill .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/3100-inmates-to-be-released-as-trump-administration-implements-criminal-justice-reform/2019/07/19/7ed0daf6-a9a4-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_73 .. that allowed some prisoners to be released early, including one of Crowder’s friends. His business received $100,000 in loans through covid-19 relief programs established by bipartisan legislation that was signed into law by Trump.
Crowder said he believes Trump lost Georgia in 2020 and was skeptical of the former president’s fraud claims. But he doesn’t think Trump committed a crime. “It’s not like he bribed anybody. He’s just looking for votes,” Crowder said.
As he heard people cheer on the former president and shout “Free Trump!” Crowder said he felt excited. He rushed back into his studio to grab a nice camera, then joined a scrum of reporters near the jail entrance to document the moment.
The motorcade with former president Donald Trump arrives at the Fulton County Jail. (David Walter Banks for The Washington Post)
Nirappil and DeChalus reported from Washington. Isaac Arnsdorf in Atlanta contributed to this report.
More on the Trump Georgia indictment
The latest: Trump surrendered at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia on charges that he illegally conspired to overturn his 2020 election loss. Authorities released his booking record — including his height and weight — and mug shot.
The charges: Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act. Read the full text of the Georgia indictment. Here’s a breakdown of the charges against Trump and a list of everyone else who was charged in the Georgia case. Trump now faces 91 total charges in four criminal cases.
The case: Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) has been investigating whether Trump and his associates broke the law when they sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Here’s what happens next in the Georgia case.
Can Trump still run for president? While it has never been attempted by a candidate from a major party before, Trump is allowed to run for president while under indictment — or even if he is convicted of a crime.
Emmanuel Felton is the race and ethnicity reporter on the America desk at The Washington Post. Twitter
Fenit Nirappil is a reporter for the Health & Science team who covers public health, infectious diseases and LGBTQ issues. He previously covered local politics.Twitter
Camila DeChalus is a congressional reporter for The Washington Post who focuses on Capitol Hill, national politics and political campaigns.Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/28/trump-georgia-motorcade-fulton-jail/
"Judge Sets Trial Date in March for Trump’s Federal Election Case
[...]Judge warns Trump not to threaten witnesses in 2020 election subversion case"
The former president’s motorcade passed through neighborhoods with a recurring role in America’s civil rights struggle
By Emmanuel Felton
,
Fenit Nirappil and Camila DeChalus
August 28, 2023 at 4:58 p.m. EDT
Bystanders gather near the intersection of Lowery and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards in Atlanta as former president Donald Trump rides in a motorcade while traveling from the Fulton County Jail on Thursday. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
All links
ATLANTA — Up and down Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard, Atlantans stopped what they were doing to witness history coming again to their community.
Former president Donald Trump was on his way to surrender on charges of having conspired to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. His motorcade’s route from Atlanta’s airport to the Fulton County Jail Thursday evening took him through the heart of predominantly Black neighborhoods with a recurring role in the nation’s civil rights struggle.
He passed Lovell Riddle, 39, at the corner of Lowery and TP Burruss Senior Drive, both named, like many of the streets in the area, for local Black pastors.
“I see them bringing people to Rice Street every day,” said Riddle, using the colloquial name for the Atlanta jail. “But this was like a big show, this was a circus. He had this big police escort and all of that. If it were me or any other Black man accused of what he is accused of, we would have already been under the jail and they would have thrown the keys away.”
[Insert: Too much unwarranted privilege simply creates more unnecessary dissension.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172716019]
In interviews with The Washington Post, the people who lined the route grappled with putting Thursday’s events in the context of the community’s long and fraught history. To some, the sight of Trump being forced to submit to the booking process felt like a victory in the continuing battle over whether Black voters get an equal say. His efforts to “find” enough fraudulent votes to overturn the election, these people said, had felt like an attempted disenfranchisement that harked back to the Jim Crow era.
2:43 - Former President Donald Trump's supporters and protestors gathered at the Fulton County jail
on Aug. 24, ahead of Trump's surrender. (Video: The Washington Post)
Others expressed sympathy for the former president as he followed the well-worn path from the neighborhood to the county jail, seeing parallels between his situation and what they described as the over-criminalization of Black communities around the country. Some said they support Trump and believe the charges against him will win him votes in 2024.
[It's interesting how many put the crimes committed aside for Trump,
and substitute so many other rationals in Trump's favor. Is unfortunate.]
And for yet others, it all amounted to an expensive spectacle that would do little to fix the problems facing a once-thriving middle class community that now has some of the highest poverty and crime rates in the city.
Race is a subtext that runs through the case against Trump.
The former president’s oft-repeated but baseless contention that the election was stolen is built on his allegations of widespread vote-rigging in cities with large Black populations .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2020/11/20/f0d11954-2b71-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_10 .. such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta.
During a call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, Trump repeatedly pressed the state’s top election official to focus on metro Atlanta’s Fulton County, where he alleged without evidence that votes had been “shredded” and “dumped.”
“You will find you will be at 11,779 within minutes because Fulton County is totally corrupt,” Trump said, referring to the statewide margin of his loss to Joe Biden .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/candidates/joe-biden-2024/?itid=lk_inline_manual_12 .
Trump’s campaign spread a false narrative that two Black Fulton County election workers .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/ruby-freeman-shaye-moss-jan6-testimony/?itid=lk_inline_manual_14 — Ruby Freeman and her adult daughter Shaye Moss — had been key to the fraud. Trump has repeatedly attacked Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/31/willis-fbi-help-trump-comments/?itid=lk_inline_manual_14 , who brought the charges against him and is Black, as “so racist.”
Carousel
The areas that Trump traveled through Thursday are deeply intertwined with America’s record of racial strife and discrimination. Even the street signs reflect the connection: Lowery Boulevard, named for the Atlanta-based Black minister and civil rights advocate who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King Jr., was until 2001 named for a Confederate general.
On Trump’s way down Lowery to the jail, he passed Morehouse College, the historically Black institution that is King’s alma mater; the Bankhead neighborhood, where rappers T.I. and Lil Nas X grew up and found inspiration; and the English Avenue community, where the local elementary school was dynamited during the contentious integration of the city’s public schools.
[Image of route]
Before the motorcade came through, residents and office workers rushed to get spots on sidewalks, stoops and balconies. Trump, who has proclaimed his innocence, later recounted on Newsmax that he had been greeted by “tremendous crowds in Atlanta that were so friendly.” Some cellphone videos that ricocheted around social media showed a different reaction, with people shouting obscenities or making crude gestures as the convoy sped by.
Those who were there suggest the response was more complicated, with Trump’s unexpected arrival — and rapid departure — prompting feelings of catharsis and anger, awe and disgust, indignance and pride.
Former president Donald Trump rides in a motorcade as he travels from the airport to the Fulton County Jail Thursday in Atlanta. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
People watch the motorcade from the front porch of a home near the intersection of Mayson Turner Road and Lowery Boulevard. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
People gather near the intersection of Lowery and Boone boulevards to watch the motorcade. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
An improvised parade
Coryn Lima, a 20-year-old student at Georgia State University, was walking home from his aunt’s house when he noticed the commotion. Officials hadn’t announced the motorcade’s route in advance, but police cordoning off a two-mile stretch of Lowery Boulevard was a sure sign.
Trump rides through Fulton County after his surrender
1:23 Former President Donald Trump's motorcade drove through Fulton County, Ga., on Aug. 24,
after his surrender to election interference charges. (Video: The Washington Post)
As news spread that Trump was coming through on his way to the jail, where he would be fingerprinted and required to take a mug shot, the neighborhood took on a carnival air. Lima said his neighbors ran out of their homes with their kids to grab a spot, like they might for a parade. There were also people he didn’t recognize: Some had signs supporting Trump, others came with profanity-laced posters denouncing him.
The moment came and went with a flash, Lima said, with Trump’s motorcade, which consisted of more than a dozen cars, moving down the street “extremely fast.” But Lima said it had still been “cathartic.”
“From what I’ve been told by people around my age, Trump is like a supervillain,” Lima said. “And he’s finally getting caught for all of his supervillain crimes.”
Lima lives in a heavily Democratic community. President Biden won 90 percent or more of the vote in the precincts along this stretch of Lowery — a landslide, but results that reflected a small improvement for Trump compared with 2016. Lima said he believes there is enough evidence to convict Trump. But he isn’t convinced that the former president, who is the front-runner for the GOP nomination in 2024, will face any consequences.
Trump has been at the center of the U.S. political conversation for just about as long as Lima has been aware of politics, and Lima said he just doesn’t know what to expect next. Seeing the former president face arrest was “pretty cool,” Lima said. But that doesn’t mean Trump will be leaving the scene any time soon.
Neighborhood neglect, within sight of new glitz
On most afternoons, you can find Lovell Riddle on the corner of Lowery and TP Burruss Senior Drive, where he and his brother sell baby turtles from small aquariums they set up on a folding table.
Riddle said Thursday evening was the first time he had ever seen a person that powerful come to his neighborhood, though he noted with a chuckle that Trump had come against his will.
Riddle doesn’t follow national politics much and rarely votes because no matter who has been in office, he said he feels his community has been neglected.
The number of people living on the streets had risen steadily in recent years as rent prices have climbed in and around the neighborhood, he said. Pointing out construction cranes building new luxury high rises as well as the billion-dollar Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the distance, Riddle said he was too concerned about how he would continue to afford to live in Atlanta to worry much about Trump.
But still, he said he is proud of what local officials are doing, including Willis, who he said “is showing what a strong Black woman can do.”
“Trump is a powerful man,” Riddle said. “I don’t think he’s going to go to jail. But I think this all makes the next politician think twice before calling up people and telling them to change this or that vote.”
People gather on the sidewalk on Lowery Boulevard. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Cheers from a Trump supporter
Denise Wells, 33, was cheering in front of a Boost Mobile store, where she is the manager, when Trump drove by. And she said that she wasn’t alone. Wells, who is Black, said there were several other young Black people out on Lowery applauding the former president, chanting slogans like “Free Donald Trump!”
Wells didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but said she started to support him during the covid-19 pandemic, when he signed bipartisan legislation that distributed stimulus checks and increased food stamp benefits. She said that money had a big impact in the Black community. She voted for Trump in 2020.
[There we have one obvious reason why Trump ever had the support he had. And one obvious reason why he still has the support he has. Maybe even millions know him only for the good he did for them and their neighbors. We tend to remember the good. No matter that Donald Duck would have done the same if he could. Millions would be totally unaware of the damage Trump did to America related to covid. See a well-worn post again:
John Oliver gets it right again. Trump fucked up on three basic facets of virus fighting - preparation, communication and coordination. On the question, Bush and Obama were on the mark. Trump lowered the drawbridge, increasing the probability any deadly airborne virus could hit America hard:
How Trump let coronavirus take over America
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164963124]
Wells said that she doesn’t think Trump did anything wrong during his campaign to overturn the election results.
“I feel like he won fair and square,” she said. Like many Trump supporters, Wells pointed to the size of his rallies as proof that the will of the people was behind the former president. She predicted the charges against Trump will ultimately backfire.
“More people are going to vote for him after this,” she said.
‘Why are y’all doing all of this?’
Pam Epps, 59, said she had mixed feelings watching Trump’s motorcade speed past her apartment. One emotion was pride in seeing a Black Atlanta leader taking on one of the world’s most powerful people.
“The DA did a good job, but really she’s just doing her job by taking on anyone, no matter how powerful they are,” she said. “Trump thinks he’s going to get away with it, but just wait and see.”
At the same time, Epps was annoyed by all the resources that were used to escort him.
“They had a truck that looked like an army tank, they had an ambulance, police were on every corner. That was outrageous to me,” Epps said. “He’s no longer the president. Why are y’all doing all of this? Let him just show up in a regular car like a regular person.”
“It’s crazy,” she added, “because when people in this neighborhood call the police, they are usually nowhere to be.”
Epps is a native of South Carolina who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 20 years, but often worries how much longer she will be able to afford to stay. She said government resources are badly needed in the neighborhood, where the sidewalks are strewn with trash and homeless people set up camp outside boarded-up abandoned houses. Despite the conditions, Epps said, her rent just keeps going up as the neighborhoods around hers gentrify.
Epps said that at the very least, Trump should be forced to pay a fine with the proceeds going to projects to improve the lives of Black Atlantans, whose votes she believes the former president tried to toss aside. She has a long list of priorities, but she said “the first thing they should do is fix that jail over there.”
The U.S. Justice Department this year announced an investigation .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/13/justice-dept-probe-atlanta-jail-after-homicides-insect-infestation/?itid=lk_inline_manual_56 .. of the conditions in the Fulton County Jail after reports that Lashawn Thompson, a 35-year-old Black man incarcerated there, had died covered in bedbugs and lice.
“That’s what it’s like for the regular people who have to go to that jail,” she said.
People crowd on the sidewalk to watch the motorcade. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Trump supporters cheer as a motorcade with Trump heads to the Fulton County Jail. (Alex Brandon/AP)
People react as the motorcade passes Bankhead Wingz on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A booking rich with comic irony
Adrienne Wilson camped out for hours on Thursday afternoon, braving the heat in a wide-brimmed hat and sleeveless dress to see Trump driven to jail.
The 40-year-old said she has watched Trump’s political career unfold with disgust, from the moment in his 2016 campaign when he mocked a reporter with a physical disability .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/25/trump-blasted-by-new-york-times-after-mocking-reporter-with-disability/?itid=lk_inline_manual_63 .. to his comments as president denigrating cities with large Black populations .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-race-record/2020/09/23/332b0b68-f10f-11ea-b796-2dd09962649c_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_63 .. to his effort to overturn the election in 2020 .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/06/trumps-brazen-attempt-overturn-2020-election-timeline/?itid=lk_inline_manual_63 . She came out to cheer on a prosecution she hoped would hold him accountable and prevent other politicians from following the same path.
Wilson, a real estate agent who is originally from Delaware, moved to Atlanta more than a decade ago. Recently she bought a home on the city’s west side, not far from Lowery Boulevard. Wilson eagerly cast a ballot against Trump in 2020, helping Biden become the first Democrat .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2020/11/08/georgia-swing-state-democrats/?itid=lk_inline_manual_64 .. to win the presidential race in Georgia since 1992. Wilson was outraged when she heard a leaked recording of Trump trying to erase that victory and saw comic irony in what she witnessed on Thursday.
“He talks about Atlanta, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, these predominantly Black communities, with such disgust and racial undertones of it being poor and Black and ghetto,” she said. “And here you are getting booked in the county jail in the middle of Atlanta by a Black prosecutor … I think it’s funny.”
She noted Trump was being processed at the same jail where the rapper Young Thug .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/13/young-thung-gunna-rap-lyrics-court/?itid=lk_inline_manual_67 .. has been held awaiting trial in a racketeering case. “He calls young Black men thugs, and now he’s going to the same jail as Young Thug because of the same prosecutor on the same charges,” she said.
But one thing Wilson wasn’t expecting to see on Thursday was the number of Black people who came out to back the former president. “To see them supporting him is mind-blowing,” she said.
Where’s the crime?
Jabari Crowder stepped outside his studio office for a break from film editing. He was puzzled at the sight of Secret Service vehicles, television cameras and cars being towed. Then he noticed three people wearing MAGA hats in an empty parking lot, and it clicked.
“He’s going through something that us in this community go through all the time,” said Crowder, a film producer who also runs an Atlanta nonprofit training aspiring filmmakers.
Crowder, 46, was well-acquainted with the jail. He said he had been booked there himself more than two decades ago on petty charges he said he didn’t recall and has picked up friends from the jail more recently. He remembers the process taking hours, but noted that the former president was in and out of the jail in less than 20 minutes.
Crowder, who has served time in prison for bank robbery and a parole violation, voted for Barack Obama and for Hillary Clinton. Then he warmed up to Trump. As president, Trump signed a criminal justice bill .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/3100-inmates-to-be-released-as-trump-administration-implements-criminal-justice-reform/2019/07/19/7ed0daf6-a9a4-11e9-a3a6-ab670962db05_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_73 .. that allowed some prisoners to be released early, including one of Crowder’s friends. His business received $100,000 in loans through covid-19 relief programs established by bipartisan legislation that was signed into law by Trump.
Crowder said he believes Trump lost Georgia in 2020 and was skeptical of the former president’s fraud claims. But he doesn’t think Trump committed a crime. “It’s not like he bribed anybody. He’s just looking for votes,” Crowder said.
As he heard people cheer on the former president and shout “Free Trump!” Crowder said he felt excited. He rushed back into his studio to grab a nice camera, then joined a scrum of reporters near the jail entrance to document the moment.
The motorcade with former president Donald Trump arrives at the Fulton County Jail. (David Walter Banks for The Washington Post)
Nirappil and DeChalus reported from Washington. Isaac Arnsdorf in Atlanta contributed to this report.
More on the Trump Georgia indictment
The latest: Trump surrendered at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia on charges that he illegally conspired to overturn his 2020 election loss. Authorities released his booking record — including his height and weight — and mug shot.
The charges: Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act. Read the full text of the Georgia indictment. Here’s a breakdown of the charges against Trump and a list of everyone else who was charged in the Georgia case. Trump now faces 91 total charges in four criminal cases.
The case: Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) has been investigating whether Trump and his associates broke the law when they sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Here’s what happens next in the Georgia case.
Can Trump still run for president? While it has never been attempted by a candidate from a major party before, Trump is allowed to run for president while under indictment — or even if he is convicted of a crime.
Emmanuel Felton is the race and ethnicity reporter on the America desk at The Washington Post. Twitter
Fenit Nirappil is a reporter for the Health & Science team who covers public health, infectious diseases and LGBTQ issues. He previously covered local politics.Twitter
Camila DeChalus is a congressional reporter for The Washington Post who focuses on Capitol Hill, national politics and political campaigns.Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/28/trump-georgia-motorcade-fulton-jail/
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