Atlantic Magazine: Donald Trump Turns Mugshot into Menacing Threat

BEDMINSTER, NJ - AUGUST 13: Former President Donald J. Trump at the first tee during the f
Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Wendell Husebø

Former President Donald Trump’s “menacing” mugshot threatens to “elevate” his persona heading into the 2024 election, Atlantic Magazine’s Megan Garber wrote in a Friday column.

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. He might have smiled, as some of his alleged co-conspirators did, making light of his legal jeopardy. He might have assumed an expression of indignation, the better to channel one of his preferred personas: the innocent man, victimized.

But he did neither. Instead, he looks straight at the viewer, seemingly incandescent with rage, taking the advice he has reportedly given to others: Perform your anger. Turn it into your script. Make it into your threat. His menacing glare gives a similar stage direction to the people who follow him and do his bidding—both in spite of his disrespect for democratic processes and because of it.

Fulton County, Georgia, officials arraigned Trump Thursday on charges of allegedly trying to illegally overturn the 2020 Georgia election. It was his fourth arraignment in five months.

Legal scholars and media pundits warn the indictments of a former president could put the nation on a slippery slope toward a banana republic.

Trump argued Thursday the indictments are election interference by President Joe Biden, the former president’s main political opponent heading into the 2024 election.

“What they’re doing is election interference. They’re trying to interfere with an election. There’s never been anything like it in our country before. This is their way of campaigning,” Trump said.

“This is one instance, but you have three other instances,” he said. “It’s election interference.”

WATCH — Trump: GA Booking Was “Terrible Experience;” It’s Election Interference

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.

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