Sonoma County reacts to Donald Trump’s arraignment

For a short time Tuesday, Donald J. Trump did something few people could ever hope to accomplish: He united Fox News and MSNBC, the poles of American mainstream media.

The two news networks were offering very different commentary, but their video feeds and graphics were virtually indistinguishable, the same courthouse security team front and center as the world waited for the former president to enter a Manhattan courthouse.

“TRUMP UNDER ARREST AT NEW YORK CRIMINAL COURT,” MSNBC announced.

“TRUMP BEING PROCESSED INSIDE NY COURTHOUSE,” Fox declared.

It may have been the first time Trump emerged as a force of unity. And possibly the last, though, of course, that remains to be seen.

The most divisive political figure in modern American history broke new ground once again when he walked inside that court building, presumably to be fingerprinted and read the 34 felony counts levied by the grand jury of the County of New York. Depending on who you ask, it was an event that represents either an overdue act of courage by prosecutors or a weaponized partisan attack by a liberal cabal.

Regardless, the gravity of the moment was inescapable. A former American president is being prosecuted in a court of law, even as he prepares for another run at the White House in 2024. The scene resonated on the sidewalks of New York City, on the websites of every news organization in the country and here in Sonoma County.

“It is a tragic moment in some ways, to have this happen to a chief executive,” said Ken Fox, a retired educator who taught U.S. history and government at Piner High School for 38 years and lives in Santa Rosa. “But it also shows no one is above the law. The law must prevail with facts. That’s a positive thing for our country.”

And the rest of world is watching, Fox said.

“That we’re true to what we’re bragging about,” he explained. “Every student that pledges the flag, and every adult, ends it ‘with liberty and justice for all.’”

That justice extends even to the man who held the most powerful position in the nation a little more than two years ago.

At 88, Fox still works as a substitute teacher. His hunger for current events hasn’t waned. (He was watching Trump’s arraignment on CNN when reached by phone.) Nor has his knowledge of American history.

The only parallel Ken Fox could draw to Tuesday’s images was Watergate. He had been at Piner for about four years when Richard Nixon and his inner circle were drawn into a scandal starting in mid-June 1972 that resulted in Senate hearings and, ultimately, the then-president’s impeachment and resignation two years later.

Ken Fox’s take? Nixon is looking a lot better these days.

“We were appalled at what happened then,” he said.

“But now, comparing it to the kind of things we see (Trump) is alleged to have done, they pale. Because Nixon knew the Constitution. He made a mistake, but he wasn’t dumb. The guy we have now doesn’t even understand the Constitution of the United States.”

Some would disagree on who really doesn’t understand the Constitution.

Sonoma County’s votes are reliably blue, its liberal reputation veering toward “organic oat milk.” But it is not a political monolith. Trump supporters like Matt Heath are adamant that Tuesday’s arraignment was a dangerous farce.

“Both a federal judge and previous New York judge did not pursue this indictment for a reason,” said Heath, chair of the Republican Party of Sonoma County. “It’s clearly a political prosecution of a presidential candidate. Meanwhile, hardened criminals get a slap on the wrist in New York.

“It is apparent that the New York DA is trying to make a name for themselves by participating in this left-wing-orchestrated political prosecution to stop Trump from being elected president in 2024.”

Asked whether he is ready to move on from Trump, who is never far from his next explosive controversy, Heath said, “President Trump accomplished more in his four years than most Presidents have in their entire political careers.”

He ticked off a list of achievements: no new wars, Russia and China “held at bay,” insulin prices at record lows, criminal justice reform that released thousands of men of color and “a roaring economy that every American felt.”

“I am confident Americans are continuing to lose faith in the Democrat Party and will not fall for this political ploy, and elect a Republican President in 2024!” Heath said.

Regardless of the politics, Santa Rosa Junior College instructor Johannes van Gorp stressed the magnitude of Tuesday’s spectacle. In fact, he was already preparing his political science students for it Monday.

“I tried to frame more of the historical context — how this is not the norm,” van Gorp said. “I asked them, ‘How many other presidents are there whose mug shot you’ve seen?’ The students kind of looked around, and I said, ‘Guys, it’s a trick question.’ I was trying to put out how different this is.”

One member of the class responded by wondering whether this arraignment would result in political violence, like the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The fact that’s their first reaction is not great,” van Gorp said.

To the instructor, that failed insurrection was the epitome of America’s drift from its ideals of pluralism and one-person-one-vote. Van Gorp was born in the Netherlands. He chose to live here partly because of those ideals, and he said he believes the current Republican Party is a threat to upend them.

Still, van Gorp isn’t alarmist on this subject.

As one of his students pointed out, other countries have arrested their former heads of state. One of them, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was recently reelected president of Brazil after serving 580 days in jail for money laundering and corruption before the charges were annulled in 2021.

The U.S. has known tumultuous politics, too, van Gorp said, including the Civil War of 1861-64 and the civil rights and anti-war protests that engulfed the nation a century later.

“Even in this moment, it’s still a democracy,” van Gorp said. “It doesn’t necessarily break down. It’s not like the sky is falling and everything is unraveling.”

Yet, just as in 2020-21, when Trump attempted to subvert the results of the presidential election to keep himself in the White House, a lot of Americans are watching our democratic mechanisms closely.

It made for an uncomfortable decision by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as he weighed a grand jury’s indictment. Electing not to prosecute Trump would certainly draw charges of cowardice and dereliction of duty from the left — just as his decision to proceed with the case is resulting in accusations of bias from the right.

Bragg’s decision was of keen interest to Jill Ravitch, the recently retired Sonoma County district attorney.

In an email to The Press Democrat, Ravitch, who left office in December 2022, emphasized that district attorneys are elected by the people precisely to avoid political pressure by officer holders. The indictment, she said, was issued by a grand jury composed of community members, and no one is above the law.

“That includes clergy, law enforcement, wealthy business owners and elected officials,” she said.

Ravitch said she couldn’t help but draw a comparison to her own moment in a harsh spotlight, when property developer and banker Bill Gallaher bankrolled a recall campaign against her after she had prosecuted one of his companies for failing to evacuate seniors during the Tubbs Fire in 2017.

“The playbook currently in use by the former president probably has the chapter used in Sonoma County by an angry defendant (and his) entitled revenge,” Ravitch wrote. “The vitriol failed to sway the voters here; hopefully the rule of law and the criminal justice process will trump the excoriating of the system by the accused and his supporters.”

Some Sonoma County residents were entirely unmoved by this historic event. In the long line for Russian River Brewery on Fourth Street in Santa Rosa during lunch hour, no one seemed very interested in discussing the news from New York.

One man said he doesn’t follow politics. A young woman asked of Trump, “What did he do? Did he do something today?”

Hearing that, the guy in line behind her shouted, “Put him in jail!” Then declined further comment.

A couple blocks away in Courthouse Square, a few people were enjoying their lunches at the public tables. One man was sitting alone in the sun. It turned out to be Hugh Futrell, the real estate developer who has transformed much of Santa Rosa’s downtown.

If Futrell is an economic dynamo in Sonoma County, he apparently feels no kinship with Donald Trump.

“Personally, politically and in almost every respect, he is the opposite of what a human being should be,” Futrell said, his mild tone belying those scorching opinions. “It’s incredible such a person has been president. It’s incredible that he could be president again.”

Futrell believes this prosecution is important — if it precedes others.

Trump is being investigated by both the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office (for election meddling in Georgia in 2020) and the U.S. Department of Justice (also for election interference, and for mishandling classified documents).

Trump won’t go to jail for this “low-level felony,” according to Futrell. If additional indictments don’t emerge, he will only be empowered.

Futrell points to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who took power as Turkish president in 2014, then proceeded to weed out judges and political leaders who might have opposed him. Erdoğan now has complete authoritarian control of Turkey.

It can’t happen here?

That’s a quaint notion, some believe, in an era of fluid political norms — where a U.S. president can deny certified election results, and a grand jury can later drag him into court, and the former president’s supporters can immediately threaten to target opponents with probes of their own.

“If Trump were elected again, with his state of mind — particularly if he had a Republican Congress — all bets would really be off, I think,” Futrell said.

Which is not to say the Santa Rosa developer is arguing that the prosecution of Donald J. Trump shouldn’t be fair and thorough.

“Even sociopathic thugs are entitled to their presumption of innocence,” Futrell said.

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.