Trump lovers spin MAGA mug shots as a positive. Don’t buy it.

These days, the most amusing spectacle in America is conservatives’ attempt to spin the arrests of Donald Trump and his associates into a positive. And the racketeering indictment in Georgia has hilariously sent the right-wing spin cycle into overdrive. 

After officials in Fulton County said the former president and his 18 co-defendants would have to go through the booking process like everyone else — meaning they’d need to take mug shots — Republicans are going full-bore with the laugh-to-keep-from-crying energy, portraying the rather humiliating booking process as a badge of honor. 

It’s hard to imagine Trump earnestly agreeing.

He called the process a “terrible experience” after going through it Thursday. And looking at the MAGA mug shots, it strains credulity that someone like Trump — who obsesses over his self-image — wanted a pic like this, emblazoned with a sheriff’s badge and devoid of favorable editing.

Nonetheless, Trump lovers have been hard at work, trying to frame his mug shot as a positive. As though their leader is playing 3D chess or something.  

Using words like “hot” and “iconic,” right-wingers like actor Roseanne Barr and podcaster Charlie Kirk have suggested that the mug shot is actually good for the former president.

And members of Trump’s inner circle have made similar claims — unconvincingly — as the MAGA movement’s legal troubles have piled up.

“I’m fortunate to have a chance to fight for my country,” Giuliani said during an interview on Newsmax on Wednesday when asked about having to take a mug shot. He called the ordeal an “opportunity,” sounding a bit like the kind of advice you’d get to encourage positive thinking. 

Counselor: What do we call indictments, Rudy? 

Giuliani: [rolls eyes] Opportunities …

Play

Rudy Giuliani booked at Fulton County jail on 2020 election interference charges August 23, 2023 / 11:59

The former New York City mayor has had some help with this push. 

“I think it’s going to backfire on them just like everything else does,” Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump said Wednesday, also on Newsmax.

“This mug shot — you wait for it — it’s going to be on posters, in people’s dorm rooms, it’s going to be on T-shirts,” she added. “It is going to be a flag flown by people who love this country, because they’re backing Donald Trump.”

Her claim sounded strikingly similar to remarks made by Fox News host Pete Hegseth in March, when he said Trump’s mug shot would be “iconic — like Frank Sinatra mug shot iconic. Like, printed on T-shirts, put it on dorm room posters.” Hegseth said the mug shot would become a “symbol of resistance” against the “deep state.”

Trump-supporting lawyer Alan Dershowitz said Thursday that Trump’s mug shot “will be the bestselling T-shirt in the history of T-shirts,” echoing remarks he made in March. 

What a consolation. Trump may get locked up, but at least he can sell some T-shirts.

One Trump supporter even made a fake mug shot of herself in a show of solidarity. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., followed suit with her own.

But I’d argue such efforts kind of underscore the humiliation in this whole ordeal, no?

Trump didn’t merely have his picture taken. He had his picture taken as part of a criminal booking process that was a nonconsensual affair, as far as Fulton County officials are concerned. And whether Trump’s a star or not, he had to let them do it. It’s inherently disempowering.

I think the attempt to frame this process — mug shot and all — as something beneficial to Trump speaks to the mythology he has built around himself for nearly a decade. Conservatives have been trained to view Trump as a supreme figure who always wins, even when he loses. And once someone subscribes to that fiction, it makes sense how they might view one of his most embarrassing moments as a step toward one of his most triumphant ones.