Hours after a Manhattan grand jury indicted Donald Trump and made him the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges, the space around downtown Chicago’s Trump Tower — a site of protest and unrest at many of the Trump presidency’s most polarizing moments — looked particularly normal.
No droves of Trump haters celebrated. No backers of the former president gathered to decry the grand jury’s decision. Business people passed the building nonplussed, headphones in. Tourists with shopping bags made their instinctual stops to take sunset photos of the city’s stunning buildings.
But amid the normalcy, one woman stopped to point her phone straight at that polarizing five-letter surname that lords over the iconic strip of the Chicago River. Then, she put her middle finger in front of the camera and snapped a pic.
[ Donald Trump indicted; 1st ex-president charged with crime ]
“It was a pleasant surprise,” said the woman, who was visiting from New York, the same state that produced the charges centered around Trump’s alleged involvement in hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to a porn star to purportedly silence claims of an extramarital affair.
The tourist’s partner said the charges showed no one is above the law. However, she wasn’t optimistic that the charges would lead to a guilty verdict.
“But if it leads to some sort of conversation about accountability and justice, I’d be OK with that,” said the woman, who said her name was Julianne but declined to share her last name.
Moments later, a young man mounted Wacker Drive’s tan concrete steps to stand tall for a photo before the tower’s mammoth “Trump” logo. He curled his right arm low for the camera and slightly flexed.
The man, like most people passing under the brazen last name logo of the now-indicted ex-president, declined to share his thoughts on the news. Many people near Trump Tower said they hadn’t even yet heard about the charges Thursday evening, a far — if soft — cry from the heated, 2,000-strong crowd that marched on the same 98-story building when Trump first won in 2016.
[ From 2016: 5 arrested after largely peaceful anti-Trump protests downtown ]
But across the city and state, politicians jumped to share their thoughts on the historic indictment.
The grand jury’s decision quickly rose to the forefront of Chicago’s mayoral runoff as Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson used the charge to attack former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas.
Johnson called Trump’s administration “one of the most corrupt” in history. He pivoted to allege Vallas’ campaign received money from Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.
Vallas brushed off the Trump connection. He has never had any connect with DeVos, he said. She has not donated directly to Vallas, though an advocacy organization she founded spent roughly $60,000 on digital media supporting Vallas. She no longer leads the group, but continues to contribute to it.
In a separate statement Thursday, Vallas celebrated the Trump indictment. The news “begins the process of proving once and for all that no one is above the law and everyone must be held accountable for their actions,” he said.
He labeled Trump’s recent promises for retribution “dangerous and irresponsible.”
“Donald Trump repeatedly and shamelessly violated the rules and norms that govern the Office of the President, cheapening the most widely respected elected position in the world and demeaning our democracy. He must be held accountable,” Vallas said.
In another post sharing a New York Times article announcing the indictment, Johnson was brief: “Justice must be served,” he said.
Downstate Sen. Darren Bailey, who unsuccessfully ran as the Republican nominee for Illinois governor last year, responded to the news by posting to Facebook a picture of himself on stage with the former president at a rally where Trump endorsed him.
“I stand with President Trump, Because he stood with us,” Bailey wrote in the post.
U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of downstate Oakland, an ardent Trump supporter who received the former president’s endorsement at a rally near Quincy in her GOP primary race last year, posted statements to both her campaign and her official Twitter accounts in response to the indictment.
She accused the prosecutors behind these charges and other investigations Trump faces of being corrupt and attempting to “destroy our system of justice and tear our country apart.”
“We stand with President Donald J. Trump and the America First movement. We will prevail! #MAGA,” she wrote on her campaign account.
On her official account, she wrote: “We will not be deterred. We will defeat the communists trying to destroy our country. We will save America.”
Former Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Channahon, an outspoken critic of the former president who voted for his second impeachment and was one of two GOP members of the House committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, called Thursday “a somber day for our nation.”
“Donald Trump committed many crimes, but this indictment should be a reminder that in America, NO ONE is above the law,” Kinzinger wrote on Twitter. “We must move forward and let justice prevail. The anti-democratic threat, however, hasn’t diminished.”
Across the aisle, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said in a series of Twitter posts that the court process must be allowed to play out, with respect for both Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump’s alleged crimes and Trump’s due process rights.
“But no one is above the law — not even a former president,” Durbin said.
