P01135809— Will They Hang This Presidential Portrait In The National Portrait Gallery? Part I

The East Room? The State Dining Room?

Please credit: "Photographer-- Nancy Ohanian"

Yesterday, Juan Cole reminded us that “the tactic of staring sternly into the camera in defiance when having a mug shot taken after being charged and arrested as a criminal is hardly new” with Trump. He just joined a long line of thuggish racketeers, who took a defiant mug shot that did them no good, including Al Capone and John Gotti. CNN’s Alayna Greene reported that Trump’s team spent time strategizing on how Trump should pose before he picked the defiant Mafioso look.

The NY Times called it A Trump Mug Shot For History, “the picture of the year” and insinuating it’s how he will be forever remembered: “A historic image that will be seared into the public record and referred to for perpetuity— the first mug shot of an American president. ‘It’s dramatically unprecedented,’ said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University. ‘Of all the millions, maybe billions of photos taken of Donald Trump, this could stand as the most famous. Or notorious.’ It is possible, he added, that in the future the mug shot will seem like the ultimate bookend to a political arc in the United States that began decades ago, with Richard Nixon’s ‘I am not a crook.’… As usual, he is dressed in the colors of the American flag: navy suit, white shirt, bright red tie— though his typical flag lapel pin is either absent or invisible in the picture. He glowers out from beneath his brows, unsmiling, eyes rendered oddly bloodshot, brow furrowed, chin tucked in, as if he is about to head-butt the camera. The image is stark, shorn of the flags and fancy that have been Mr. Trump’s preferred framings for photo ops at Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower, or during his term in office, and that communicate power and the gilded glow of success.”

Please credit: "Photographer-- Nancy Ohanian"

Vanessa Friedman continued that “While very few voters are likely to have read any of the Trump indictments in full, they will almost all definitely see the mug shot, and the former president— who posted this one on his recently reinstated feed on X, not long after it was released— cares deeply about his pictures. He always has. As far back as 2016, he was complaining about photos of him that NBC had used, especially one that he said showed him with a double chin. In 2017 he tweeted about a CNN book on the election: ‘Hope it does well but used worst cover photo of me!’ In 2020, when a snap of him on the White House lawn with his hair blown back in the wind went viral, he chimed in: ‘More Fake News. This was photoshopped, obviously, but the wind was strong and the hair looks good? Anything to demean!’ And earlier this month on Truth Social, he said of the Fox News show Fox & Friends, ‘They purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back.’ (The picture he seemed upset about showed him with his chin tucked in, rather than jutting out, creating the appearance of a few extra chins.) The suggestion was that this was part of the reason he would not join the first Republican primary debate.”

Charlie Sykes asked his readers to “Think for a moment what it took to bring us to this point: the twisted, bizarre, tangled story, with so many chapters, and legions of enablers, rationalizers, clowns, cowards, and co-conspirators. But it all comes back to the person in this mugshot. It was always going to end this way, wasn’t it? If you elect a serial liar and conman, a narcissist, bully, wannabe mobster, with the vocabulary of an emotionally insecure nine-year-old, you can’t really be shocked at how it turned out, can you? This is what Trump wanted, because this is what he chose. mHe could have accepted defeat and allowed the peaceful transfer of power. He could have behaved like every other president in American history. Instead, he chose to lie about the election. He chose to orchestrate a coup… It was a conscious decision to steal classified documents — including war plans— and ignore a federal subpoena. It was his choice to try to obstruct and cover up his crime, just like it was his choice to pay hush money to a porn star before the 2016 election. It was also the GOP’s choice.”

Sykes railed at his old GOP colleagues: “Time and again, they had a chance to draw the line, or at least take an off-ramp. They could have stood astride all the insanity and criminality and said no. They could have impeached and disqualified him forever. Instead, they served up the now-familiar farrago of Faustian bargains, cowardice, magical thinking, and corruption that led us to what happened this week: When the eight candidates at the GOP debate were asked whether they would support Trump even if he was a convicted felon, six of the eight raised their hands. Don’t gloss over this extraordinary moment from the party of law and order… [H]ere we are. The man in the mugshot is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. Trump has skirted the ragged edges of the law for decades. So, the mugshot above was inevitable. But there was nothing inevitable about a political party— and tens of millions of its supporters— looking at this man, and saying, This is fine. If only they had been warned.”