The Mug Shot Is a Warning
Donald Trump’s booking photo was supposed to be an exercise in humility. He turned it into a threat.
The Greek myth of Medusa takes many forms, but the most common is this: Medusa was a woman who, having angered the goddess Athena, was made into a monster. Athena punished Medusa by turning her hair into a writhing tangle of serpents, and then by ensuring that anyone who looked into Medusa’s eyes would be turned to stone. In shaping their story of a gaze made violent, the creators of that early democracy were prescient about the man who has tried to destroy ours. Donald Trump’s head may be covered in spray rather than snakes, but he is a Medusa all the same, reconfigured for the age of mass media: Once you look at him, your fate is already sealed.
Last night, the 45th president became inmate number P01135809 of Georgia’s Fulton County Jail. Trump had his mug shot taken. It was shared with the public. We looked, of course. And he was prepared for our gaze: hair, makeup, angle, pose. 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.
The public imagined the picture long before we actually saw it, spending months before yesterday discussing and anticipating it. The preemptive attention was fueled by the fact that the first president to be indicted has also been indicted, at this point, four times. Each new legal proceeding has inspired more talk of the image: Would there be a mug shot? What would it look like? What would it feel like, to see it? The Fulton County sheriff promised that his office would do its part to provide the answers. “We’ll have a mug shot ready for you,” he said, like a paparazzo making his assurances to TMZ.
Once it became clear that the officer would make good on the promise, the speculation turned into giddiness. Last night, CNN led a countdown to Trump’s appearance at the Atlanta-area jail, its chyrons announcing when Trump’s plane had departed for Georgia, when it had landed at the airport, and when its passengers had been deposited into the vehicles that would take them to the facility. Trump was given a motorcade, which made its way through the city like a parade of lights and sirens. MSNBC shot it all from above, using the footage as B-roll while its commentators discussed the belated satisfactions of justice.
Even as Trump was held to account, then—even as he was, in theory, brought low—he was elevated. Last night, as so many times before, viewers’ gazes were directed Trump-ward. Medusa’s curse is also the curse of anyone in her path: Whatever the consequences, she compels us to look.
In the process, though, the event that should have been a show of accountability for Trump became an act of concession to him. 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. 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.
Welcome to the age, then, of mug-shot rule. Trump, evidently pleased with his portrait, broadcast it on social media. (The platforms he used included X, formerly known as Twitter, which had once banned him for spreading violent lies to its users.) The image he shared is doctored, of course. Its background is stripped of the Fulton County seal, as if it were a mere headshot for an actor seeking the role of “autocrat.” The caption Trump appended to the shot suggests that, in this elemental legal document, questions of legality are beside the point. And it attempts to turn the language of the accusation against itself. (“ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” it says, baselessly suggesting that the indictment is its own attempt to interfere with the results of the 2020 election. “NEVER SURRENDER!” it adds, applying the same tactic to the photo that existed precisely because of Trump’s surrender.)
Mug shots have long been used to make political messages: See, for example, the booking images of John Lewis, of Jane Fonda, of Tom DeLay. Trump’s version, though, is less a piece of wordless rhetoric than it is a reminder to all who see it of the threat embodied by a vengeful Trump. One of the logistical purposes of the mug shot is to create a visual record of the arrested person should they be accused of committing another crime later on. Trump’s booking photo is, in that way, a symbolic gesture—we needed no further documentation of the most inescapable face in the world—but also something of an omen. This will never be over, it suggests. That face, with all its dangers, will only become more difficult to avoid. Trump, reportedly, orchestrated the logistics of last night’s surrender so that its melodramas would play out on prime time.
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.”