Editor's Note: Tuesday, one of the most incredible political stories in American history reached new, crazy heights, when Donald Trump surrendered to federal authorities for arraignment in Miami, an almost incomprehensible escalation in the clown war that has defined our country for close to eight years. The image was stark: a former president and current 2024 frontrunner booked, fingerprinted, and made to plead before court (not guilty on all 37 counts, he naturally insists).

Die-hard anti-Trumpers are mostly focused on the classified documents Orange Man Bad kept at his Floridian palace / gold-plated compound, finding new pivots and dodges almost every day to draw some distinction between Trump’s behavior and the behavior of President Biden, who also had classified documents, from the Obama era, in his home (oops!). Meanwhile, the sober minded among us are of course mostly just wondering if imprisoning political rivals is our new American normal.

But as important as these questions are, I think Tuesday’s real story took place outside, on the courthouse lawn. Pirate Wires is based in Miami, and I started receiving texts from downtown around 9AM. Donald’s circus had arrived, and those early morning hours whispered of a day for the history books. It was wild, the energy that Trump could summon still, on a whim, and I started to wonder… had any other major contender for the White House been indicted, what would it look like on the courthouse lawn? In the case of Biden and DeSantis, it’s easy to imagine a similar mob of reporters, with cameras, waiting for some comment. But who, from either party, could summon thousands, on a moment’s notice, for a Boomer tailgate party?