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 means something to hard-working female athletes who lost awards and scholarships thanks to men posing as women. It represents any American who has been shadowbanned, censored, or suspended by social media thought police because they told the truth about Covid, vaccines, biology, the war in Ukraine, or the Hunter Biden laptop.
It represents all the doctors who had their licenses suspended or were given “psychiatric evaluations” because they refused to parrot the regime’s official line on coronavirus and acceptable mitigation methods, and instead offered alternatives. The mugshot is a rallying cry for everyone whose business was unconstitutionally shut down during Covid, especially those whose businesses never reopened. It symbolizes all the students who were put on lockdown and forced to wear masks and take an experimental vaccine, and the grandparents who died alone in Covid confinement.
The Trump mugshot represents all the federal whistleblowers who were harassed and punished for telling the truth about the Biden family business, which suggests the sitting president is compromised by our nation’s greatest enemies. It also means something to the Jan. 6 prisoners who faced solitary confinement for suggesting the 2020 election was rigged.
It speaks to all the disaffected Americans who can’t afford rent or groceries thanks to “Bidenonomics.” It speaks to those who ride the bus or subway to work in fear of violent crime in lawless blue cities. It symbolizes the 13 soldiers killed in Afghanistan and the many more wounded and maimed thanks to Biden’s incompetence. It speaks to all the Americans who are struggling as they watch our leaders “invest” billions of their hard-earned tax dollars on unreliable, useless “green energy” and export billions more to Ukraine — all to enrich themselves and their friends.
A year ago, Russia hoaxer and former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe labeled “mainstream” conservatives domestic terrorists, even likening them to the Islamic caliphate. At the same time, federal agencies have invested tens of millions of dollars in combating domestic terrorists, aka conservatives. To the left, the members of the right are not fellow Americans, we’re a violent threat to the nation. Anyone who still believes in the Constitution, though, knows that it is the uniparty, the deep state, the corporate media, and the tech oligarchs who are the real threats.
Conservatives know this isn’t about Trump. Even Trump knows this isn’t about Trump. “In the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you,” he said after his first indictment. Trump’s mugshot has become a rallying cry for Americans everywhere. It is peak pop culture and is becoming as iconic to the right as Che Guevara’s photograph is to the left. It symbolizes everyone who has been kicked down by the “Rich Men North of Richmond” but is continuing to fight back anyway.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
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