Trump's Mug Shot Sends the Left -- and John Bolton -- Into a Deranged Spiral

MSNBC and CNN showed that they are Real News, Mr. President by celebrating the Trump mug shot by showing his mug shot and those of his fellow persecutees 188 times in 24 hours.

Over the past 24 hours, CNN and MSNBC have gleefully brandished the mugshots of Donald Trump's co-defendants like grim trophies for their audiences to gawk at.

MRC analysts examined all coverage on CNN and MSNBC from 6:00 p.m. on August 23 to that same time the following day. During that 24-hour span, the two cable networks displayed mugshots of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former Trump administration Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and the other defendants a whopping 188 times, amounting to a combined 83 minutes of airtime.

MSNBC led the pair in both total on-screen displays and screen time; they showed the mugshots 122 times, for a total of 56 minutes and 23 seconds. CNN showed the images 66 times, which amounted to 27 minutes and 12 seconds of screen time.

...

On August 17, CNN host Jake Tapper complained on Twitter about claims that lefty journalists were "reveling" in the details of the Georgia indictment. "CNN journalists & commentators, including conservatives, stating *facts* about Trump's legal issues are falsely described as reveling in them," he huffed. "Wildly, characteristically dishonest."

But Tapper's supposed outrage looks rather overdone, given his own enthusiasm about the freshly-obtained mugshot of Mark Meadows during CNN's August 24 live indictment coverage. More than once during the 3:00 p.m. ET hour, he requested that producers bring the photo back on the screen so he could continue discussing it.

If these journalists want to get offended when they're accused of publicly enjoying this latest Trump indictment, then they should probably stop publicly enjoying it. For a start, they could quit waving around the latest mugshots like excited baseball card collectors.

Update: Biden immediately began fundraising of the Trump booking, just to prove that this absolutely, 100% a coordinated political operation.

The celebrations from Democrats, including President Biden, have begun rolling in following former President Donald Trump's booking in the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta on Thursday.

Some sought to remind others of the phrase often repeated by members of their party that "no one is above the law," while Biden used the opportunity to fundraise for his 2024 re-election campaign.

"Apropos of nothing, I think today's a great day to give to my campaign," Biden posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. Trump's campaign also later posted its own fundraising request on Truth Social, using the mugshot taken at the jail.

For his own part, Trump was unbowed, and showed that by returning to Twitter with the mug shot that CNN and MSNBC had posted so many times:

He also began selling Mug Shot Merch:

I don't mind either of those. The left wants Trump to show shame and contrition about the partisan witch-hunt indictments. They similarly demanded he act like an ashamed, guilty sex offender regarding the lunatic sex-obsessed fame-chaser E. Jean Carroll and her risible claims of being raped, in her advanced years, by a man who plainly prefers younger women. Basically they demanded that he Confess His Guilt despite his actual position of being innocent.

Trump is showing that he's not ashamed of these new phony indictments. I know it makes Jake Tapper very angry, but we on the right no longer respect the authority of your politicized, Stasi-fied rotten, criminal institutions, and we are not awed, not even slightly impressed by their pronouncements.

John Bolton wasted no time reassuring the Jake Tapper Left that he himself definitely does continue offering respect and fealty to their debased institutions.

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton said Thursday on CNN's "The Source" that former President Donald Trump's mug shot was staged so he looked like a "thug."

Anchor Kaitlan Collins said, "I just wonder, as someone who worked inside the West Wing when Donald Trump was president, what is it like for you to see his mug shot tonight?"

Bolton said, "I thought it was carefully staged. They must have thought about what look they wanted. He could have smiled. He could have looked benign. Instead, he looks like a thug. I think it's intended to be a sign of intimidation against the prosecutors and judges. That's what they picked, and we'll see that picture everywhere."

Trump literally never smiles in pictures. He refused, semi-famously, to smile for his Time Magazine photo shoot in 2015, the one with the eagle. The photographer kept telling him to smile; Trump just looked at the camera with his dour glare. "He kept giving me Blue Steel," the photographer cracked.

Like me, he probably does not like the way he looks when he smiles, so he avoids it.

John Bolton's belief that Trump, who literally never smiles for staged photos, is not smiling in order to show a "sign of intimidation against the prosecutors and judges" is a sign that John Bolton is mentally infirm and psychologically broken and must never be permitted to handle any sensitive task again.

It's also a sign that he's a grifter who is not quite sure his retirement savings will hold up so he's singing for his supper on any pissant leftwing outlet that will have him.

Mollie Hemingway: "These are attacks on constitutional freedoms and rights that we have. And that is the point. It does also clarify what the next election is about, and how important it is for everyone who cares about the country to be united on standing up against this. This is how you lose a republic. And so it clarifies all the issues."

Now I'm going to vent.

If it doesn't post for you, readers added context that Ron DeSantis is the governor of Florida, not the Governor of Georgia, nor the Governor of America, and does not have any power over federal or Georgia officials.

But this ignorant incontinence got 120,000 views.

If you're thinking that I shouldn't pick on a stupid Twitter rando, well he's not just a stupid Twitter rando. At least by his own claims, he's a "radio host." People, he's suggesting, actually listen to him.

I don't cover Trump's travails all that much, exactly because of crap like this. If Trump's most ardent supporters don't take this shit seriously, and just see it less as an assault on democracy and more just as another opportunity to Meme on the Meatball and get some good Trump Twitter Clicks, then why the fuck should his less enthusiastic supporters give a shit?

As Instapundit likes to say, I'll start taking the Assault on Democracy seriously when those forever warning about the Assault on Democracy start taking it seriously.

And I have to say, I am on my last nerve with the unashamed -- nay, proud -- ignorance of some people, especially the Thug Bunch on Twitter. They want some kind of pass for being stupid and ignorant, because they want to claim they're "just speakin' in the voice of the common man" and they "don't truck with fancy-pants intellectuals" and all this crude, phony populist-adjacent bullshit. They want to be graded on a curve, because they're Special Snowflakes who Have Their Own Folk Ways of Knowing That Are Just as Good as the Ways Used by the Colonizer Class.

You know, like critical race theorists who always posit that there are special ways of knowing which only People of Color can access, giving them special insight into math, and that "minority math" is right even if it's objectively wrong.

I say the same thing to these Fake Populist Ways of Knowing that I say to the Fake Minority Ways of Knowing: How about you just fucking look up the actual facts and attempt to present the actual facts accurately and truthfully instead of making shit up in your own stupid head and then demanding that other people accept your ignorant falsehoods as true because you have a special Identity Privilege entitling you to Your Own Truth?

I can't believe I have to explain federalism and the separate soveriegnties of the federal government and state government to conservatives -- or, let's face it, fake conservative Johnny-Come-Lately grifters.

Betcha got a lot of sweet, sweet retweets for your filthy ignorance, huh, Stewie?

Populist Privilege -- Phony Populist Privilege, I should say, because these people are grifters; claiming that normal requirements of even slightly knowing what the fuck you are talking about are suspended because you're just so filled with Holy Populist Workin' Man Purity that "facts" are just another f-word, man -- is a Real and Growing Concern.

I'll meet you halfway when you meet me halfway and read a fucking book. Any book. Any book at all. At this point I'll even accept one with pictures in it.

"Populist" does not mean pig-ignorant. Almost everyone here is a populist to one extent or another, and most of us are pretty sharp, and feel embarrassment when we are caught saying ignorant Lamont the Big Dummy things, and feel especially ashamed if we are caught lying.

"Populist" is not a license to lie, despite what some Rah-Rah Grifter fake populists seem to believe.

No, you don't have special ways of knowing the truth and you don't have your own Special Identity-Based Truth. No one does.

Wrong is wrong, ignorant is ignorant, and lies are lies. And there is no new Identity Group called "the Common Man" which you can use as a shield to hide from these facts.

posted by Ace at 12:14 PM

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