As Donald Trump pleaded not guilty, a bizarre carnival unfolded outside | Mike Kelly

NEW YORK — Michael Picard stood in the chilly morning shadows of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Tuesday, draped in an outfit he hoped would please his hero.

“You have to wear the colors for Donald Trump,” Picard said, tugging at his red, white and blue knee-length overalls that he wore with no T-shirt.

“I might catch a cold,” said Picard, 34, of Hartford, Connecticut. “But it’s worth it.”

Politics is inevitably a game of messages. But it also can be a magnet for performances, sometimes artful and meaningful, sometimes funny, sometimes bizarre and ultimately confusing.

On this day, with Trump becoming the first former or sitting president in U.S. history to face criminal charges — in a case linked to his alleged hush money payments to a porn star he reportedly slept with — messages certainly resonated.

Some were deeply serious, with Trump’s followers asking why payments to cover up an alleged sexual affair were worthy of a criminal case and with Trump’s critics proclaiming that all Americans, even a former president, should be equal under the law.

Some messages were ominous, though.

Before arriving in New York from his home in Florida and pleading not guilty to 34 felonies before New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, Trump, who is running again for president, called his case “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history” and warned of “potential death and destruction.”

Whether Trump’s court battle will result in such mayhem or whether it will even affect his prospects in the 2024 presidential election remains to be seen.

A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on Monday showed Trump leading his closest Republican rival for the presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 26 percentage points. The same poll also indicated that Americans were nearly evenly divided about Trump’s indictment. About 42% of the poll respondents supported his criminal prosecution, with 39% disapproving and 19% not sure how they felt.

Document unsealed: Read the full indictment of Donald Trump

Trump indictment live updates: Trump pleads not guilty to 34 felony counts in historic New York case

Another unpredictable drama unfolds

But as so often happens with anything involving Trump, the gravity of the moment blended with unpredictable theatrics.

And as the day unfolded, the drama in the park across from the well-guarded courthouse ranged from resolutely clever to circus-like to theater of the absurd. It was as if the massive waves of emotion and craziness that have rippled through American politics ever since Trump first entered the presidential sweepstakes in 2015 had suddenly collided in a small Manhattan park.

Let’s begin with the well-tanned woman who showed up for a rally of Trump supporters in the courthouse park, before his arraignment and not guilty plea, wearing only high heels and a bikini bottom and having covered her breasts with strips of masking tape and the rest of her exposed skin with talcum powder.

A wall of New York City police officers blocked her path to the rally.

Not so with a man identifying himself as “Jason Scoop.” Cops had no problem with him.

As Trump supporters filed into the park, Scoop, wearing a thick Trumpian blond wig, gray suit, white shirt and red tie, walked past police and gave an impromptu, disjointed and incredibly confusing speech about how Trump supposedly helped African American basketball players.

“Am I a Trump supporter?” Scoop asked later, repeating a question in which he was asked to describe his political affiliation. “I’m a comedian. I’m here to make money and get publicity.”

And so it went.

It was a day steeped in historical weight. How could it not be? If Trump is convicted of all 34 felony counts for his alleged secret payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, he could face up to four years in prison.

More: Trump indictment came after DA reviewed hush money payment to Playboy model Karen McDougal

Adding to the importance of the day was the additional possibility that this case is just the beginning of years of legal troubles for the former president, with more criminal trials coming.

At least two federal investigations are in the works — one for Trump’s alleged unauthorized mishandling of top-secret documents and another for his reported role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol. Georgia authorities, meanwhile, are investigating whether Trump improperly tried to unlawfully intervene in the 2020 presidential election that he lost to President Joe Biden.

And let’s not forget that Trump’s business lost a civil case in this same Manhattan courthouse last year. Later this month, in federal court, Trump faces another trial over his alleged defaming of a woman after she accused him of raping her years ago.

'He's going to have fun with this'

Yet, the atmosphere Tuesday in lower Manhattan sometimes bordered on a sporting event.

Just before 11 a.m., one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia and a fervent purveyor of conspiracy theories, arrived at the park across Manhattan’s Centre Street from the courthouse.

New York Mayor Eric Adams was so concerned about Greene’s visit — and possible antics — that on Monday he warned “rabble-rousers” to “control yourselves.”

“New York is our home,” Adams said, “not a playground for your misplaced anger.”

Police obviously paid attention to Adams’ warning. As Greene emerged from a white Ford Expedition with tinted windows, nearly 20 officers surrounded her. She then tried to walk a half-block along Leonard Street toward the courthouse.

Nearly 100 news photographers and videographers lunged toward her, pushing one another. She stopped and tried to speak with a bullhorn to the crowd of Trump supporters. But a throng of anti-Trump protesters yelled and blew whistles.

After 15 minutes, she left.

Just after noon, a long black Cadillac limousine with a presidential seal on the door cruised down Broadway, about two blocks from the courthouse. From the back seat, a man with blond-orange hair and a red baseball cap proclaiming “Make America Great Again,” and wearing a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, rolled down the window and waved.

Lunchtime strollers — including this columnist — whipped out their cellphones to record what they thought was their small link with history.

Fifteen minutes later, the truth emerged: The limo was not presidential. The presidential seal was also fake. So was the man with the blond-orange hair who opened the window and waved. He was just another player in the day’s theatrics.

Back at the park, police separated pro-Trump and anti-Trump crowds with a series of steel fences — and a 6-foot-wide buffer zone between the fencing for police to patrol.

As news and police helicopters thumped overhead and a motorcade carried Trump to the courthouse from his residence at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, the pro-Trump and anti-Trump folks pushed toward the fences, leaning over and yelling at each other.

“There are only two genders in this world,” screamed a man waving a large, blue Trump flag.

“Lock him up,” howled a group of young men in the anti-Trump portion of the park.

As their yelling went back and forth — and the cacophony blended together — the messages and sloganeering were incomprehensible, a modern-day Tower of Babel, with everyone shouting but no one being heard.

Six African American men from Miami proclaimed they were “Blacks for Trump.”

“God told me to come,” said Michael Symonette, the group’s leader.

Paulina Farr, a retired nurses’ aide from Smithtown, New York, who claimed to have been in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, sermonized that the assault on the Capitol was really the work of leftists, helped by the FBI and CIA.

“We know the truth,” Farr said.

Dino Ciny, 54, of New York City, who described himself as a “proud, heterosexual white man” and waved a banner that proclaimed “Trump or Death,” said he expects the former president to get a “20% bump in the polls” from the court case in Manhattan.

“He’s going to have fun with this,” Ciny said. “I’m going to have fun with this.”

On the other side of the park, Jennifer Fisher, a retired journalist, said she was protesting Trump as a way of “fighting fascism.”

Her friend Karen Irwin played music from a collection of songs called “The Warrior Goddess” and insisted that Trump’s indictment proves that “it is still possible that a version of democracy works.”

Meanwhile, Tony Villar, 74, a retired carpenter from Riverhead, New York, said he had come to the park to protest Trump but also to market a new toilet paper dispenser that he designed featuring a cartoon-like depiction of Trump’s face.

Trump, he said, “is a danger to democracy.”

The hours passed. The noise grew louder. Trump came and went through a side door at the courthouse.

On the sidewalk outside the park, Anthony Manns, 64, a former airport baggage handler, watched the two sides argue and leaned on a scooter that had brought him from his home in East New York.

“This might be the final hours of our country,” Manns said.

On this day, it was hard to tell how the nation may be affected by the latest chapter in Trumpian history. But you can’t blame anyone for asking.

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for NorthJersey.com as well as the author of three critically acclaimed non-fiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in New Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Trump indictment leads to rallies of support, protests in NY