On Tuesday, Donald Trump was arraigned at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse for paying $130,000 in hush money to a former mistress in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign and then falsifying related business documents. Supporters and detractors of Trump rallied outside the courthouse. The intense divisions of the Trump era were on full display as well as the toxic brew of grievances and conspiracy theories embraced by the former president’s most rabid followers.

We covered Arraignment Day on this week's show. Our reporters gathered comments from average New Yorkers and diehard MAGA protesters and then joined us on the show. We also heard from Indy criminal justice correspondent Ted Hamm who interviewed then-candidate for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in 2020 and has continued to closely follow his career. Indy Editor-in-Chief John Tarleton looked at Trump’s political and media strategy and took calls from listeners including one who argued that Trump would be the “peace candidate” in 2024.

Donald Trump flew back to his Mar-a-Lago mansion following his arraignment. Meanwhile, thousands of incarcerated people on Rikers Island who have not had a trial cannot leave that hellhole of a jail for lack of money to make bail. On yesterday’s radio show, Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, a democratic socialist from Brooklyn, updated us on state budget negotiations in Albany between Gov. Kathy Hochul, who wants to roll back the 2019 bail reform law and state legislators who do not.

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