Trump’s Mugshot ‘Was Supposed to Be An Exercise in Humility,’ The Atlantic Whines

The Atlantic is angry that former President Donald Trump’s historic mugshot made him look like a total badass.

“Donald Trump’s booking photo was supposed to be an exercise in humility,” whined Megan Garber in The Atlantic’s top headline article on Friday.

“[H]e was prepared for our gaze: hair, makeup, angle, pose,” Garber said. “In the portrait — it is a portrait, in the end — Trump glares directly into the camera. He seethes. He glowers. He turns in a studied performance. Photos like this are typically exercises in enforced humility. Trump’s is a display of ongoing power. He treats his mug shot as our menace.”

Translation: it was supposed to be an exercise in humiliation.

“Even as Trump was held to account, then — even as he was, in theory, brought low — he was elevated,” Garber lamented.

“[T]he event that should have been a show of accountability for Trump became an act of concession to him,” she continued. “The typical mug shot, usually taken after the subject’s unexpected arrest, bestows its power on the people on the other end of the camera. The alleged criminal, in it, tends to be disheveled, displaced, small. But Trump, trailed by the news cameras that confer his ubiquity, found a way to turn the moment’s historical meaning — a former president, mug-shotted — into one more opportunity for brand building.”

Garber finished her piece by whining that she’s afraid Trump and Republicans will seek revenge:

As the image dropped last night — just before 9 p.m. — the Fox host Jesse Watters asked his guest, Ned Ryun of the conservative political-training organization American Majority, to comment on its meaning. Ryun complied, discussing the photo as evidence of Trump’s political persecution by the administrative state and reducing the facts gathered in the indictment to mere political gamesmanship. The only appropriate response, he suggested, would be for Republicans to counter with their own indictments.

“You’re saying Republicans should promise mug shots of Democrats,” Watters said.

“One hundred percent,” came the reply.

Sean Hannity began his Fox show with the same idea, as he broadcast Trump’s portrait to his viewers. “You are looking at Joe Biden — oh, I’m sorry, Donald Trump’s — official mug shot,” the host said. He paused for dramatic effect before clarifying the point: “Joe Biden will be soon enough anyway.”

As a reminder, The Atlantic — which is run by neocon editor-and-chief Jeffrey Goldberg — is the same propaganda rag that called for a “pandemic amnesty” to “forgive one another” for what they did during covid.

There’s not going to be any amnesty for the crimes of this regime and its enablers. This is the future you chose!