Millions and millions of photographs have been taken of American presidents.
But none like this.
The mug shot of Donald Trump instantly became one of the most iconic images of anyone who served as commander in chief.
Inmate No. P01135809 stares out of the booking photo, his face like stone. It’s impossible to know what Trump is feeling. But the image, taken after his motorcade drove into the Fulton County Jail, does not radiate his trademark bravado. His eyes bore into you. And the seal of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in a top corner is a reminder that Trump, for all his former power, is beholden to a process where he cannot control his own fate.
But in some ways, the mug shot, taken after he surrendered to the authorities on Thursday, represents the inevitable culmination of a life that has stretched and buckled the constraints around the presidency and frequently strained the law. More broadly, for a man who built his legend through paparazzi snaps in the New York gossip columns and who prizes Time magazines bearing his face, the Georgia mug shot, for all its indignity, represents yet another new frontier of notoriety. But for a nation still entangled in recriminations and fury whipped up by Trump, the photograph – which flashed immediately around the world – represents a special kind of tragedy.
But even if the national interest is truly served by multiple indictments of a former president, could the humiliation now being piled on backfire? Furthermore, Trump has weaponized every aspect of his legal struggle to super charge the cult of victimization and vengeance that drives his political appeal. Trump quickly posted his booking photo to his Truth Social network, and used it to return to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. His campaign is already plastering it everywhere – likely to help raise the cash he’s spending on his defense and turning his shame into a new kind of power, in another affront to the justice system.
For any other politician, a mug shot would be the end. For Trump, it’s a springboard. After all, he was processed in the jail in Atlanta only 24 hours after most of his rivals for the GOP nomination raised their hands in a presidential debate in Wisconsin to say they’d support him if he becomes the GOP nominee.
President Richard Nixon’s two-handed victory salute from the doors of his helicopter couldn’t hide the stigma of his defeated final exit from the White House after he resigned over Watergate. In September 2001, President George W. Bush stood on a pile of charred wreckage at Ground Zero in New York with a bullhorn, catalyzing a wounded nation’s shift from grief to resolve after its worst ever terror attack. Four years later, a picture of him staring down from the presidential plane at the drowned Gulf Coast epitomized his negligent leadership after Hurricane Katrina. For future generations, such images define a chapter of national lore when all the details have blurred together.
A face the whole world knows frozen in ignominy. A harrowing American epoch captured in the click of a shutter.
Source: CNN
