Trump’s mugshot was a theatrical masterstroke with a showman’s flair for the outrageous

Angry, defiant, just a little bit orange: this was classic Trump, writes veteran Washington observer Jon Sopel. What next? A bumper sticker saying ‘No to the Jailhouse. Yes to the White House’?

Trump went for angry, defiant, steely – and just a little bit orange (AFP)

It was always going to be dramatic, but Donald Trump has always had an eye for the theatrical. There are endless stories of how the former host of The Apprentice fixates on the visual – the camera angle, the positioning of the lights. I went to bed on Thursday night with Donald Trump not yet at the Fulton County jailhouse, Georgia, where he had to surrender to have his mugshot taken in connection with the latest slew of charges.

What would be his facial expression? Sad? Defiant? Repentant? (OK that was never going to happen.) Angry? Tough guy? Or would he go the route of some of his co-conspirators and have an ironic, dismissive smile on his face? Someone contacted me to say they thought Rudy Giuliani had a trainee corpse look.

Trump went for angry, defiant, steely – and just a little bit orange. Head tilted down, blue eyes looking up to stare uncompromisingly straight into the camera lens, hair like a swirl of cirrus cloud looking blonder than ever, and mouth as tightly pursed as a sphincter. It is rehearsed and studied. It is full glower. And Trump and his campaign team clearly think it’s a hit.

But using that mugshot to herald his return to Twitter (or X, as I suppose we must now call it)? Well, I hadn’t seen that coming. The platform he loved – and from which he was booted off after the repeated lies he spewed about the 2020 election – is his again.

It is a theatrical masterstroke with a showman’s flair for the outrageous. While for most normal humans this would be a source of maximum shame and embarrassment, for Trump it’s an opportunity; he is wired differently. The mugshot is now available on all Trump merch and tat. Mugshot equals “kerching” and more campaign dollars.

There is an obvious contradiction though – underneath the photo in full caps lock he has written NO SURRENDER! But (of course) the photo symbolises the moment he has just surrendered to the forces of law and order. The four indictments and 91 charges are now an essential part of his campaign for 2024. Maybe he should produce a bumper sticker:

No to the Jailhouse

Yes to the White House

Because that is what is at stake for him; it is the most likely binary, either/or outcome.

He is not going to win the Republican nomination just having a go at Joe Biden’s record. Any Republican can do that, and probably more effectively than Trump. What fires up his base is grievance, a fury that the deep state is persecuting him, that the justice department is weaponised, that the only reason Trump is being attacked is because he’s an outsider – a victim who dares to take on the establishment.

It may be hokum and ludicrous, but it is binding the Trump base ever more tightly to their man. And with each of these four indictments, his poll numbers have gone up among Republican voters. Not for the first time he is upending the laws of political gravity.

So, yes, these indictments present an opportunity. But they represent the greatest danger. Federal prosecutions that come to court in the US have a 95 per cent plus success rate. Most cases don’t ever come to trial – they end up in a backroom plea deal.

But it is impossible to imagine any circumstances where Trump would – or could – enter negotiations with the Justice Department or a district attorney. Plead guilty to a slightly lesser charge? Take a fine or a shorter prison sentence? No. It is all or nothing. S*** or bust. Any deal would reek of weakness – and that would destroy the Trump brand.

Many of his supporters – and even detractors – argue these indictments have been a massive miscalculation by the various overlords of the legal establishment. They point to his rising poll numbers. But to make prosecutorial decisions on the basis of what it would do to a defendant’s popularity would be a grotesque politicisation of the justice system. Whether your name is Trump or Smith or Brown or Bloggs shouldn’t matter a jot – everyone is equal before the law. No one is above it.

And while Trump might remain popular with a bewilderingly large chunk of the Republican Party, that’s not the same nationwide. That majority of Americans who thought he was unelectable in 2020 – are they really going to look at that mugshot and think, “he’s my man for 2024”?

Which brings me to the eight other Republicans who staged their first televised debate the night before Trump’s oxygen-stealing arraignment in Georgia. Nikki Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador, described him as the most unpopular politician in America. The former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, weighed in too. And Mike Pence – the veep all through the Trump years – has joined the pile-on, condemning the unconstitutional way in which his former boss tried to steal the 2020 election.

But for all the sound and fury of this first televised debate, did anyone emerge as a serious challenger to Donald Trump? And have they got the courage to really take him on? The most telling part of this first set-piece of the 2024 election was silent; it was about 10 seconds of television that spoke volumes about the state of the GOP.

The candidates have signed a pledge to support whoever emerges as the winner – so the moderator asked the eight hopefuls to put their hands up if they would continue to support Trump even if he’s convicted. The hand of tech entrepreneur and rising star of this primary campaign Vivek Ramaswamy shot up – so did three others – and then, somewhat more tentatively and awkwardly, up went the arms of Pence, Haley and Christie.

Astonishing.

The man with the now iconic mugshot image still owns the Republican Party. And everything, I mean everything, is all about him. Just how Trump likes it.

Jon Sopel presents ‘The News Agents’ podcast and was the BBC North America editor