That image certainly captures the arrested development. But the Dorian Gray avatar unveiled at the jailhouse is probably the one E.J. Carroll saw coming through the dressing room door.

I think that depends on the context.

If, for example, I intend to hand someone my money for investment, I'm not going to wait until it is conclusively proven that they're a fraud before I rethink my plans.

:100:

Some people say Trump sucked Giulani's cock — Benkei

:rofl: @NOS4A2

MUG-SHOT: Trump Capitalizes on Jail Photo With T-Shirts, Mugs, and Bumper Stickers

Imagine the kind of dupe you have to be to buy this crap. :lol:

Anyway— the hope from his cult is that this will be the “biggest thing ever,” and will lead to him winning. It won’t. It’ll last about a week, die down like everything else, and be forgotten by the public. Most people think he should be convicted anyway.

We were told for two years how badly the democrats were gonna be wiped out by the Republican “red wave” …same kind of wishful thinking here I guess.

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1694849434062877177?s=20

Lol

Photoshop reality. At least she's consistent. :roll:

One by one, some with a little hesitation, six hands went up on the debate stage Wednesday night when the eight Republican candidates answered whether they would support Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination if he were a convicted criminal. Hand raising is a juvenile and reductive exercise in any political debate, but it’s worth unpacking this moment, which provides clarity into the damage that Mr. Trump has inflicted on his own party.

Six people who themselves want to lead their country think it would be fine to have a convicted felon as the nation’s chief executive. Six candidates apparently would not be bothered to see Mr. Trump stand on the Capitol steps in 2025 and swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, no matter if he had been convicted by a jury of violating that same Constitution by (take your choice) conspiracy to obstruct justice, lying to the U.S. government, racketeering and conspiracy to commit forgery, or conspiracy to defraud the United States. (The Fox News hosts, trying to race through the evening’s brief Trump section so they could move on to more important questions about invading Mexico, didn’t dwell on which charges qualified for a hand-raise. So any of them would do.)

There was never any question that Vivek Ramaswamy’s hand would shoot up first. But even Nikki Haley, though she generally tried to position herself as a reasonable alternative to Mr. Ramaswamy’s earsplitting drivel, raised her hand. So did Ron DeSantis, after peeking around to see what the other kids were doing. And Mike Pence’s decision to join this group, while proudly boasting of his constitutional bona fides for simply doing his job on Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrated the cognitive dissonance at the heart of his candidacy.

Only Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson demonstrated some respect for the rule of law by opposing the election of a criminal. ....

Mr. Christie managed to say something that sounded somewhat forthright: “I am not going to bow to anyone when we have a president of the United States who disrespects the Constitution.” For this Mr. Christie and Mr. Hutchinson were both roundly booed. — NY Times, Raising a Hand for the Man in the Mugshot

Just shows how utterly f***ed the GOP and their voters have become by following Trump into the abyss. My sincere hope is that in November 2024 this is resoundingly proven by the election results.

My sincere hope is that in November 2024 this is resoundingly proven by the election results. — Wayfarer

Which was the problem of the previous results not being accepted because one can do that if desired. The proof cannot be proven because the forces of evil are just that good.

It is sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy but with an extra bit of puppet theater where the strings become more important than the movements on stage.

The Art of the Deal:

Which was the problem of the previous results not being accepted because one can do that if desired. The proof cannot be proven because the forces of evil are just that good. — Paine

I think giving way to cynicism actually feeds the Trump myth. I think there's an electoral wipeout coming for the Republicans. There was already one in 2022, but the next will be much bigger. I don't entertain the idea that Trump/MAGA is *actually* powerful, as distinct from generating the illusion of power. At the end of this cycle, the electorate will make it crystal clear.

Furthermore, that when the current indictments are brought to trial, that Trump will be found guilty and and that by Jan 6th 2025, he and many of his co-conspirators will be in jail. Don't forget that a large number of persons have already been imprisoned over the disgraceful Congress invasion. It will take time, but that will be the outcome.

Well, I was a ventriloquist, throwing my voice with that observation. I sincerely hope that certain groups do not get the upper hand restricting rights and access to equal treatment under the law.

The puppet shows influences who it influences. But it is the survival of institutions that will determine how the next generation will live.

I wish I could be that optimistic - and I hope you're right. As it is, the last two presidential elections were decided by about 100K voters in swing states - and this is likely to be the case in 2024..

100K voters in swing states — EricH

How much do you reckon Trump has done to attract additional undecideds and swing voters? (as distinct from making his rusted-on followers even more vocal in their support.) I would say he's done nothing to increase his base. He lost fair and square last time, and he's going to keep losing (even if he were on the ballot, which I doubt). I think whatever power Trump wields rests on the illusion that he's powerful. If people stop believing it, he'll have no power. It's a real emperor's new clothes scenario.

A suit has been filed by a lawyer in Florida, to disqualify Trump from the ballot on the grounds of the 14th Amendment. Read more here https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4171623-florida-lawyer-files-challenge-to-disqualify-trump-from-2024-race-citing-14th-amendment/

He lost fair and square last time, and he's going to keep losing (even if he were on the ballot, which I doubt). I think whatever power Trump wields rests on the illusion that he's powerful. If people stop believing it, he'll have no power. It's a real emperor's new clothes scenario. — Wayfarer

I hope you're right, but what I see (and I hope I'm wrong) is that the Trump phenomena isn't about putative power exactly. It's that Trump and Trumpism has precisely the right enemies in an era of burgeoning tribalism, surging right-wing nationalism and the burning nostalgia for 'golden eras'.

Trump's seductive because he is hated by disdainful elites, intellectuals, the bureaucracy, professional politicians, mainstream media, liberal lawyers, progressives, academics, apparatchiks of political correctness, educated professionals, cosmopolitan urbanites, pious Hollywood celebrities and virtue signalling rich folk.

He's become almost a perfect folk hero for these disgruntled and irrational times; an outlaw whose magnitude is endlessly renewed by the onslaught of continuing invective, scorn and legal 'persecution' faced by Trump and his people. Somehow he's managed to combine being underdog and overlord.

I'm with Tom Storm here - I hope you're right.

Something I've heard from conservatives is that they wish Trump hadn't been indicted and they'd rather his future be decided by the will of the voters. But we already went through that in 2020 and Trump didn't accept the will of the voters. His actions resulting from not accepting the will of the voters are what led to several of his indictments.

exactly. It's ridiculous to hear "will of the voters" in this circumstance - Trump is being indicted because he wanted to take control against the will of the voters. Donald Trump's existence is itself a threat to the possibility that the will of the voters will be enacted in the future.

It's that Trump and Trumpism has precisely the right enemies in an era of burgeoning tribalism, surging right-wing nationalism and the burning nostalgia for 'golden eras'. — Tom Storm

But that demographic is on the wane. The reason Republicans are frantically trying to gerrymander everything is because they know their electoral base is dying out and the electorate is becoming younger and more diverse. Plus everything they say is amplified through the Fox boom-box, without that they would be seen for the dwindling force they are.

:100: x :100: :clap: (Careful, Wayf, your 'materialist bias' is beginning to show. :smirk:)

Realpolitik, in my view :wink:

:up:

The Debate on FoxNews had a hard time with the proverbial RATINGS. It was one of the lowest rated EVER, if not THE LOWEST. It showed that many of those participating are ‘second tier’ and merely ‘pretenders to the throne. — Trump, Truth Social

‘Pretenders to the throne’. Speaks volumes, don’t it.

Three in five Americans say Trump should stand trial before the Republican primaries or 2024 general election

Roughly 60% of the country thinks this guy is a crook and should stand trial before the election.

My fellow Americans really aren’t as dumb as their reputation would suggest. Polling shows only that the Republican Party is out of touch. They’ll continue paying for it.

(Democrats are out of touch too…but not by the same distance.)

Take a read of this.

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.

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.

I’ve always stuck by the theory that we’re in a moral panic and Trump is a folk devil. Not much else explains what others have called TDS. This article only solidifies it for me, the way it weaves a little narrative that confirms the author’s own fears and anxieties, all divined from a mugshot and nowhere else. Like how the once host of The Apprentice is a criminal mastermind, a Russian spy, the fascist barbarian at the gates, will melt earth in nuclear war, and can incite insurrection and lawlessness with his magical tweets, eroding the foundations of Democracy™—each one rings as hollow as the last. But these conspiracy theories justify, or are used to disguise, the fascism they’ve adopted in order to combat both Trump’s rise and their own decline in credibility and power. The persecution of one’s political opponents, the criminalization of contesting an election and political speech, is justified because, well, look at his mugshot.

If anyone was really afraid of him, he'd be dead already.

If anyone was really afraid of him, he'd be dead already. — frank

That's Putinworthy!

... all divined from a mugshot and nowhere else. — NOS4A2

Nowhere else?

It is not clear whether your blindness and ignorance is feigned, willful, or as with so many Trumpists, an inability to see below the facade.

The mugshot attests to the power of images. How much time did Trump spend before his gold-plated mirror working on this latest image? And his followers have bought into it, in some cases literally. I don't know what he imagined this image would convey, but that is part of the power of images.

What I see is the image of a petulant old man/child wearing the latest shade from his changing make-up pallet and dyed comb over hairstyle, trying to put the orange man image in the past.

Although this in not the image he wants to convey, it is still successful in so far as the focus is on the image and not what lies behind the mask.

As the author Megan Garber puts it in the article quoted:

one more opportunity for brand building.

It will be interesting to see to what extent he will attempt to make the trial another brand building opportunity.

quote="NOS4A2;833962"]The persecution of one’s political opponents[/quote]

In that case why is it that other political opponents are not being "persecuted"? Why is he the only "innocent victim"? The thing is, this is not a good look for him. It makes him appear to be weak. The martyr is a role he is only willing to take so far. It is, however, a role his followers embrace because Trump has told them that they are the victims, and they believe they need a powerful leader like him to right the wrongs they suffer. They see every threat against Trump as a threat against them.

Their concern, like Trump's, is not for the fate of democracy, but their own personal advantage.

What's up with that? Is he just plain lying or something?

Donald Trump’s ‘round of 67’ at Bedminster Club Championship has fans rolling on the floor laughing (Aug 27, 2023)

yes, he is a compulsive liar.

Leaving to the side (for a moment) the 'manufacture of consent' aspect of your defense of Trump, I am curious what you find attractive in his words and actions.

When he was campaigning for the 2016 election, I became very alarmed at the appeals to violence he expressed during his rallies. That is when the political divides that ran through my family sharpened into bitter conflict rather than us agreeing to disagree as we had before.

A review of a small sample of similar rhetoric shows what further widened this family divide during Trump's presidency.

Are these appeals to violence appealing for you?

You have often expressed distinctly libertarian views. Are you on board with the significant portion of MAGA that seeks to restrict civil rights and educational choices?

Are you a member of an armed and "well ordered" militia?