Donald Trump hopes his furious mugshot wins election - and keeps him out of jail
Donald Trump is using the mugshot that shames America to raise cash for a second presidential bid.
Within hours of the booking shot being taken, Suspect No. P01135809, as he is known in the Georgia court system, had used it to return to X, formerly known as Twitter, after a two-year absence. Far from being a shameful legacy, he used the image – the property of the Fulton County Sheriff – to vow “No surrender” while asking his 87 million followers to donate to his campaign fund.
A campaign insider told the Mirror: “Trump’s biggest chance of avoiding a possible jail sentence is for him to win the White House. With him back in the Oval Office, he’ll have the power to instruct prosecutors to drop charges against him. No one knows this more than Trump. He’ll stop at nothing to win next year’s election, nothing. That includes anything he can to make money for his campaign, including cashing in on his mugshot.”
The Republican frontrunner was booked and bailed at the notorious Atlanta jail on charges related to his bid to overturn the result of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden. His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, wife of his son Eric, instantly saw the value of that mugshot, saying it would be on posters and T-shirts and in dorm rooms.
Trump after his booking in Atlanta (Getty Images)She said: “We know the goal with this is to try and embarrass him in some way. I think it’s going to backfire on them.” Trump, 77, yesterday reposted a meme of the mugshot, showing it with pistols pointed at his head, each with words representing his supposed enemies, such as “Soros”, “paedophiles” and “fake news”.
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His campaign began using the prospect of a mugshot months ago, offering a T-shirt with a fake booking photo and the words “not guilty” for $36 (£28.50). Within minutes of the real mugshot’s release, Trump’s campaign team sent a fundraising email with the subject line “BREAKING NEWS: THE MUGSHOT IS HERE”, advertising a new T-shirt, and saying: “This mugshot will forever go down in history as a symbol of America’s defiance of tyranny.”
Far-right US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted her own version and said: “I stand with President Trump against the commie DA Fani Willis.” Trump and 18 others, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, were charged by Willis on August 14 on racketeering charges usually associated with mob bosses.
Some of those charged alongside him smiled in their mugshots as though they were posing for an American school yearbook. But Trump looked like a “thug”, according to John Bolton, his former national security advisor. Mr Bolton said: “They thought about what look they wanted. He could’ve smiled. He could’ve looked benign.
“Instead, he looks like a thug. I think it’s intended to be a sign of intimidation against the prosecutors and the judges.” If he manages to win back the presidency, Trump could have federal charges – over his use of classified documents and his role in the January 6 riot – against him removed.
But he could not stop the Georgia indictment as that is at state level and the power over it lies with the governor, Republican Brian Kemp. Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, said: “The mugshot will seem the ultimate bookend to a political arc in the States that began decades ago with Richard Nixon’s ‘I am not a crook’.”
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