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As former President Donald Trump prepared to turn himself in to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on April 4, protesters both for and against his indictment gathered across the street from the courthouse where he was set to be arraigned.
As chants of “No Trump, no KKK, no racist USA!” echoed on one side of Collect Pond Park, on the other side, Trump supporters gathered in solidarity with the former president.
Among the latter group was David Rem, 59, who attended the same private school as Trump—Kew-Forest in Forest Hills, Queens—and has known the Trump family since 1974, when his father died of a heart attack.
“Three days after my dad’s body was buried, Donald Trump’s father, Frederick Trump, knocked on my door at my house, asked to speak with my mother, and said, ‘From this day forward, Mrs. Rem, you’re not paying for two out of your three children. I’m on the board at Kew-Forest, and I am paying for those kids because I do not want them to be forced to go into the public school system,’” Rem recalled, overcome with emotion.
That experience, Rem said, had informed his opinion of why Trump continues to “put up with this nonsense.”
“He loves this country, like no one ever has and no one ever will,” Rem said. “And that is why he is running in 2024.”
Further pushing back against claims that the indictment was an “embarrassment” for Trump, Rem countered that the charges against the former president were an embarrassment for the United States and called for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s resignation.
He criticized Bragg’s alleged soft-on-crime policies, noting that he had downgraded 52 percent of felony cases in his jurisdiction to misdemeanors. “Violent criminals don’t do any jail time—that is an embarrassment. … That is disgraceful.”
Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury last week, and though the charges against him remain sealed, it is widely believed that they will include falsification of business records charges relating to a hush money payment made in 2016 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
