Can’t Stop Mugshot Trump
And Big Eva Doesn’t Like It
Donald Trump’s campaign funding skyrocketed last year after the infamous Georgia mugshot. It was an immediate internet meme; t-shirts memorialized it, some versions completed the bad boy image with a mock “parental advisory” label; others included the message, “Never Surrender!” The New York Times predictably called this marketing “dangerous.” In an age starved for legitimately subversive, outlaw, rock n’ roll figures, this is the closest the kids are going to get. Our celebrities are all creepy ascetics obsessed with transhumanist longevity.
If New York Judge Juan Merchan sentences Trump, as he’s threatened to do, the only predictive analog we have suggests a similar effect to the mugshot. That Trump’s opponents will cheer on any punishment of the Orange Man, however small, only reveals how outmatched they are in the new political arena inaugurated by Trump himself.
The New York case is the Stormy Daniels hush money trial, the details of which will not detain us. Judge Merchan has found Trump in contempt ten times at time of publication for talking about the case publicly and issued considerable fines. Merchan is now supposedly considering jail time for future infraction. Trump’s most recent comments in an interview accused the judge of rushing the trial and complained about the jury given the trial is taking place in a predominantly Democrat area.
When it comes to trouble with the law, Trump is unbothered. He notoriously loves litigation, understanding it as free press, something no opponent can rival even with the unified backing of legacy media. To paraphrase Trump’s erstwhile strategist, Steve Bannon, all press is good press and bad press is even better. What frustrates Trump’s opponents is his intuitive grasp of the ecosystem to which he has fully adapted himself after decades of experimentation.
Trump seems to absorb all blows that would be fatal to an ordinary politician, from the Access Hollywood Tape to accusations of collusion with foreign governments, these things end political careers. Clinton was impeached and Nixon resigned for much less. Not Trump.
Power looks like managing the plausibility structure. Every “sensible” analysist assured us, from the moment Trump descended the golden escalator, that there was no chance he would win. The second that proved false, the entire paradigm of political expectations shifted. Liberal appeals to “normalcy” are outdated and meaningless. Their attempts to remove Trump from the equation are conventional. That is, ineffective.
Two impeachments and a mountain of indictments later, and Trump remains unscathed. Polls are with him, corresponding closely to how dissatisfied people are with the current administration. Much of the “Never Trump” outcry is recycled quips from 2016. Déjà vu all over again.
What explains Trump’s imperviousness to conventionally lethal occurrences? Why don’t people care?
First, Trump’s character was a known commodity before he ever ran. Decades in the limelight made him a household name and got people comfortable with him. He never dawned the rolled-up, everyman flannel on top of a hay bale, but his boorish, crass, philandering style exuded authenticity and appealed to middle American working class, white and black. Nothing with Trump shocks us because nothing is a surprise. There’s something to that in terms of generating confidence and trust.
Second, Trump’s character and fitness may have been an issue the first time around, but it wasn’t in 2020 and certainly won’t be this year. People are tired of the constant Democrat shenanigans that marked Trump’s first term, almost all of which were bunk. The emotional reaction to anything he does has already been neutralized.
Simultaneously, mounting hypocrisy from our elites in state and press compound declining trust of the same. Russiagate was a nothing burger while Hunter Biden’s laptop, a something burger to put it mildly, was actively suppressed. This is the contrast. Then there’s the pitifully senile current occupant of the Oval Office. Trump is not a young man, but by comparison he looks and acts, in more ways than one, positively juvenile. It doesn’t matter whether you think this is true or not, it’s the predominant mood, especially with conservative voters, and anything seen as obstructing a second term will only further this narrative.
And that leads us to a third point. Trump ran on an anti-deep state message. This resonated, but it’s also smart because anything hindering his attempts to drain the swamp are attributable to the existence of said swamp and the need for its drainage (i.e., the need for Trump himself). What’s the swamp? A metaphor for corruption, an enemy of the people. When “it,” the whole apparatus, hits Trump, it hits his swelling base. “In the end, they’re not coming after me,” thundered Trump after one of the dozens of indictments went public early last year. “They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.” That mentality injects all regular occurrences with new meaning: political solidarity and indifference to criticism.
Shockingly, the left hasn’t figured all this out yet. Or maybe they have and are simply uncreative. If Judge Merchan wants to sentence Trump, go ahead, but it won’t damage Trump, it will make him stronger. If the motives behind the charges at issue are political, and there’s indication that they are, then a worse strategy couldn’t have been dreamed up for the Democrats. Widespread belief that the 2020 election was stolen is heightened by attempts to put Trump behind bars, or at least bankrupt him. It all smacks of third-world politics complete with election tampering and jailing opponents.
To many voters, it’s the left that looks guilty, not Trump. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Cries for due process, constitutional norms, and free speech fall flat when January 6 protestors are still behind bars more than three years later. No one is buying it, no one trusts the system. And if 2020 was stolen, as reputable people like Molly Hemmingway have convincingly argued, then anything denying Trump what he is owed will be perceived as injustice itself. No gag order is going to change that.
Do not expect Big Eva outlets or “thought leaders” to get this. Do not expect them to try to understand the dynamics in play. Expect them instead to recycle the feigned moral conundrum of last time around. Expect them to erroneously but piously equivocate between Trump and Biden. For all their fearmongering over the alleged politicization of Christianity, it is they that overly spiritualize politics. Most of what they say is projection. The above analysis of pre-election dynamics would never appear in their pages—not enough pietist caveats and ambiguity. We wouldn’t want people to draw the wrong conclusions.
American evangelicals have been thoroughly disserved by Big Eva’s commentary leadership over the past two election cycles—much heat, very little light. Cabined subject matter on “culture issues” abounds. It all amounted to Christianized versions of Cathedral-approved rhetoric. On nearly every single issue, from immigration to crime to public health, Big Eva world has failed for nearly a decade now. The rank-in-file are tired of it, or bored with it, or both. Can you feel the vibe shift yet?
The sites that make a living off listicles about Taylor Swift, or travel logs about finding yourself in “church hurt,” or yet more concerned consideration of modernity or whatever smart books tell you to think about cannot be expected to provide insightful, agile analysis of our politics. We were foolish for ever thinking they could. And they certainly are not going to do so in a way conditioned by our rich Protestant inheritance—politics calls for the wrong resourcement. They would rather have David French, whose sole purpose is to castigate his own people, preach to them about civility and “managing” tribalism from the pulpit. Thanks to the efforts of our own contributing editor, Ben Dunson, at least that won’t happen at the PCA General Assembly this year. People like Raymond Chung bemoaned this as a hypocritical “cancelation” move. In other words, people like Chang are recognizing the vibe shift and they don’t like it. They’re seeing evangelical opinion shift against them.
All that to say, expect even more vehement chastisement of the deplorables from Big Eva this summer. The shift will all be dismissed as “hyper-online,” “authoritarian,” and, of course, “racist.” Anything to sideline it. Don’t flinch at the hundredth article on the “cult of Christian Trumpism,” or how politics (i.e., you) are “dividing” the church. What it actually is, however, is evangelicals waking up to the fact that their incumbent intellectual class has failed not only to assert and represent their interests, but to describe reality to them in any actionable way. Stated differently, they (evangelicals) have recognized that they can do better, and they should. No doubt French et al. will assume victimhood status on this one. It will confirm all the nasty things they tell you about the “right-wing” takeover of their beloved institutions and how hard it has been for them to watch, and I’m sure it has been. But don’t fall for it.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.