Former US President Donald Trump and his supporters were quick to circulate the mug shot taken of him on Thursday. This booking photo would have been the political death sentence for any other politician. But Donald Trump is a politically transgressive and unique animal. And he is proving it once again.
A “mug shot” for posterity. Donald Trump was quick to widely distribute, on Thursday, August 24, the booking photo taken when he appeared at the police station as part of the investigation into suspicions of election manipulation in the key state of Georgia in 2020.
This is the first time that a former US president – also a potential candidate for the 2024 presidential election – has been entitled to such a picture. Without a hint of a smile, eyebrows furrowed, and a fixed gaze halfway between anger and defiance, this photo of the 45th President of the United States will undoubtedly “go down in the history books,” according to all the political experts on the United States interviewed by France 24.
Sales pitch for fundraising
This feeds the ego of a man who likes to emphasize that he is the first at everything and anything at the slightest opportunity. But it is not (only) out of vanity that Donald Trump published this portrait on X (formerly Twitter) to mark his grand return to this social network owned by Elon Musk.
https://t.co/MlIKklPSJT pic.twitter.com/Mcbf2xozsY
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2023
He did not just use it on X. His campaign team has also started selling T-shirts featuring this photo, and other memorabilia is reportedly in the works, according to The New York Times.
The “mug shot” even serves as the centerpiece of a new fundraising appeal launched by candidate Donald Trump. “It is the perfect tool to activate the most radical fringe of his electoral base, always ready to support him financially to deal with his legal problems,” recalls Thomas Gift, director of the Center for US Politics Studies at University College London.
For this expert, the “mug shot” is primarily a sales pitch for the sales representative Donald Trump, who needs to pay his legal bills.
The former president also believes that this “mug shot” can serve his political strategy, even though this photo reminds us that we are dealing with a man “facing 91 charges, some of which are identical to those faced by mafia bosses in the 1930s,” points out Richard Hargy, a British specialist in American politics. “For any other politician, such a ‘mug shot’ would mark the end of a career. For Donald Trump, it is a springboard,” asserts the American channel CNN.
In fact, in the case of the former president, “it is a gift given to him because it illustrates the narrative he has repeatedly told voters: he is the victim of a politically motivated witch hunt. This image serves to portray him as a martyr targeted by excessively zealous prosecutors,” summarizes Thomas Gift.
Carefully orchestrated anger
But a martyr ready for battle. “I’m sure he rehearsed the pose he took for the photo dozens of times in front of a mirror. It is so carefully crafted,” believes Richard Hargy.
According to this expert, Donald Trump seeks to project “the image of an intimidating man, which he has always emphasized as a quality.” The anger that also transpires is “a pose meant to indicate that he is ready for confrontation and does not fear the enemy,” adds Anurag Mishra, a specialist in American politics at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) in Verona.
This “mug shot” also reinforces “Donald Trump’s credibility as an anti-establishment candidate in the eyes of his electoral base,” says René Lindstädt, a specialist in American politics at the University of Birmingham. These supporters, often fueled by conspiracy theories, believe they are engaged in an unequal fight against the powerful, and “they want a candidate who would be able to bypass the rules imposed by the government,” adds René Lindstädt.
The former president hopes that this photo will also benefit his political interests beyond his most loyal supporters. After all, winning a presidential election requires reaching beyond one’s traditional electoral base. “An interesting first test will be to see the effect of this ‘mug shot’ on more moderate Republican voters,” says René Lindstädt.
This photo could be the judicial straw that breaks the camel’s back for some of them. But the experts interviewed believe that the majority of moderate Republicans will join the anti-Trump train, only if other Republican primary candidates or conservative media use this photo to criticize Donald Trump. But, for now, that is not the case.
Dilemma for the Democrats
The former president can also use this image to convince undecided Republicans by suggesting that it demonstrates that he “is the right-wing candidate most attacked by the Democratic power because he is the one who scares them the most,” says Anurag Mishra.
What about independent voters – who often play a crucial role in the presidential election – if Donald Trump indeed becomes the Republican Party’s candidate? The risk is that some of them will see in this photo “the persecution of a power against a man who represents the presidential office” to which many Americans are attached, warns Anurag Mishra. This could make Donald Trump more sympathetic in their eyes.
But this mug shot “should not have a significantly meaningful effect on independent voters,” believes Richard Hargy. It all depends on how the Democratic Party will use it in a face-to-face confrontation with Donald Trump. The temptation to exploit it to the fullest can be strong because this “mug shot” is a constant reminder that Donald Trump is not just a politician but also a man accused of serious crimes, points out Richard Hargy. In this regard, it can be an effective tool to mobilize Democratic voters tempted by abstention. However, it can also convince some voters that the Democrats are indeed targeting Donald Trump.
For the Republican Party, this “mug shot” represents another example of the “self-destructive process undertaken by this movement,” says René Lindstädt. If they designate and support – as seems likely – Donald Trump as their candidate, “conservatives can definitively abandon the image of being the party of law and order, which has been one of the main selling points for Republicans for decades,” concludes this expert. Even though they all cry out in unison about the “witch hunt,” their champion will still have a mug shot prominently displayed in his criminal record.
On August 24, Donald Trump and 18 other individuals were indicted for their alleged illicit attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, which was won in that key state by the current Democratic president, Joe Biden. They are being prosecuted under an organized crime law, which carries sentences of five to twenty years in prison.