Within minutes of Fulton County authorities releasing former President Donald Trump’s mugshot, political merch sites and independent retailers on Etsy and Redbubble exploded with mugs, T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and drawstring bags featuring Trump’s glaring face.
The left had foolishly hoped the Trump indictments would sour the American people on the former president. They envisioned that his mugshot would solidify their narrative that he is a criminal and a menace to “democracy.”
Instead, every blow the deep state delivered to Trump has increased his poll numbers and brought him closer to securing the Republican nomination. Democrats’ major blind spot was that they effectively criminalized, or at least demonized, half the country long before Trump’s first indictment. Conservatives aren’t turned off by his mugshot, they identify with it. The mugshot is not the next MAGA hat, as some have suggested, because Trump’s mugshot is much bigger than Trump.
Over the last few years, Democrats have weaponized the deep state and conspired with corporate media and Big Tech against anyone who is ideologically opposed to them. Trump’s intense scowl may as well be the look on the face of the peaceful pro-lifers who had their homes raided by federal agents.
It could be the traditional Catholics who were labeled dangerous “white supremacists” and had their churches infiltrated by the FBI. The Trump mugshot resonates with concerned parents who went to school board meetings and were associated with “domestic terrorism” for opposing critical race theory and the sexualization of their children.
The photograph
