Brooklynites react to Trump’s hush money conviction • Brooklyn Paper

A Manhattan jury’s decision to condemn former President Donald Trump’s hush money case sent shockwaves across the US on May 30 — but for longtime supporters of the embattled South Brooklyn politician, not much has changed.

Brooklyn is overwhelmingly Democratic—Kings County has over a million registered Democratic voters, more than any other county in New York State, and just over 141,000 registered Republicans.

But some neighborhoods are heavily red and many residents there Vote for Trump in the 2020 election. That year, the former president won a majority of the vote in neighborhoods like Bay Ridge, Gravesend, Borough Park and Sheepshead Bay — the same neighborhoods where Republicans overthrow longtime members of the Democratic Assembly in 2022.

The day after Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, his supporters in southern Brooklyn were unphased.

“It’s a scam, it’s an unfair verdict,” said Harry, a Gravesend resident who — like many people interviewed by the Brooklyn Paper on Friday — asked to be identified only by his first name.

“Nobody’s That Bad”

Harry doubted that Trump was really guilty of all 34 counts and said that usually in a large-scale indictment, the person would be found not guilty of at least some of the charges.

“Come on, nobody’s that bad,” he said.

Jacqueline, a Trump supporter who lives in Bensonhurst and works in Borough Park, felt the same way.

“For me, to tell you the truth, my view is that people will do anything to win,” she told the Brooklyn Paper.

She feels the US legal system is “messed up” and that Democrats who don’t want Trump in office would try “anything and everything” to stop him from winning the November election.

“I hope he wins the election,” she said. “I want to see change… this president, to me, is fast asleep and I don’t know when he’s going to wake up.”

Borough Park resident Sammy felt that four criminal cases against Trump — including the hush money case — were all part of a larger scheme against the former president. Democrats hoped all four cases would go to trial before November, he said, creating a roadblock to Trump’s re-election.

But the conviction did not change his mind at all.

“It’s not even a crime,” Sammy said of the president’s conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal with porn star Stormy Daniels. “First of all, he didn’t know about it. He is a very big, very rich man. He has a lot of workers, he didn’t even know what they went through in the report.”

Sammy also disputed the bombshell testimony of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen.

“Why would he tell the truth this time if he’s been lying all along?” he asked.

Barbara, a 50-year-old Borough Park resident and Trump supporter, said the former president’s critics are “trying to put a layer of negativity on him” — but that thousands like her see through that negativity . Trump spoke for Americans like her, Barbara said, who didn’t have a voice themselves.

“He was like a psychic, he could see things before they happened and he was trying to protect us,” she said. “He was like America’s mother and father, now we have no one to complain to. We are orphans without him.”

Harry also plans to vote for Trump this year — just as he did in 2016 and 2020. He said he used to like President Joe Biden, he said, but now feels he’s too old for another term .

“I like him because he’s a businessman, he’s not a politician,” he said. “He knows what is good for the country, he understands business. And it creates jobs.”

Some southern Brooklyn Democrats feel like ‘fish out of water’

But for Democrats in southern Brooklyn, Trump’s business experience is one of many disadvantages.

“Biden is fine. He’s not the biggest either. But I’d rather have him than this guy,” said Gricely, a Gravesend Democratic voter. “I prefer to elect him, he knows more about politics, what needs to be done with this country, than a businessman who has gone bankrupt many times. Do you want someone like that running the country?”

Gricely — like many South Brooklyn residents, regardless of party — is worried about how the election will play out in November.

“This is going to be one heck of an election,” she said. “If people don’t get out there and vote, we’re going to have a lot of problems. He might even be elected. We might have a murderer as president, I’m sorry to say.”

Fellow Biden supporter Linda Diosso said she was “pleasantly surprised” there wasn’t a “widespread riot” after the verdict was announced.

“I’m very worried that when he loses, it will be a repeat of the last time, and he will again say he was rigged and try to overturn it, and his crazy followers will riot again, it will be horrible,” he she said.

Diosso, an Upper West Side native who moved to South Brooklyn with her family more than 30 years ago, said she feels like a political fish out of water in the nabe. She wasn’t surprised when Trump won the district in 2020.

The Democrat said he “has to” believe Biden will win the November election.

“I have to trust that they will make it,” she said.

Barbara, who called Trump “America’s mother and father,” said she was worried about the election’s fallout. She fears it will be a rerun of the COVID era, with “no one to support humanity.”

“America is turning into a different kind of country,” she said.

Sarah, a Borough Park resident, said she would vote for Trump “even if he’s not on the ballot.”

“It’s not going to be a fair election, because it’s not fair for the Democrats to win just like that,” she said. “(Trump) would have a great chance if they left him alone.”

Rep. US Nicole Malliotakis, the lone Republican congresswoman from Brooklyn, agreed. The police — who represent a swath of southern Brooklyn, including Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst and parts of Bath Beach and Borough Park — blasted Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Democrats at large in a May 30 statement.

“I am confident that, on appeal, these charges will be overturned and, in November, voters will see past this charade and the other attempts to prevent President Trump from retaking the White House,” Malliotakis said.