Showing posts with label Trump Georgia arrest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trump Georgia arrest. Show all posts

August 25, 2023

The Meshugana Mug Shot Megillah

 

Translation from Yiddish:
The Meshugana Mug Shot Megillah

My original title:

Megalomanic Makes the Most of his Mug Shot and how Murdoch's NY Post nails Trump for lying about weight and height at indictment in top website story.

In her wanting to treat Donald Trump just like another other arrestee at the Fulton County Jail Fani Willis managed to help him snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by requiring that his mug shot be taken. She also gave him a parade led by what at my attempt to count them was about 20 blue lights flashing motorcycle officers. 
I haven't seen that many big bikes since I drove to Oregon from Massachusetts and stopped to stay overnight by chance in Elko, Nevada during their annual motorcycle jamboree (below)

A lot is being made in the media about Trump lieing about his height and weight. This was the top of the website story in Murdoch's New York Post:

Click above to read article
By Hal Brown

Heres another Fox News story:
Click to read


The Trump mug shot has dominated the news to such an extent that it already has a detailed Wikipedia entry (here in three parts, click each to enlarge):



It's noteworthy that Wikipedia has pages devoted to discussion as to whether this subject even deserves suhc a distinction saying that the case for this is the the photo will surely becone iconic. 

Articles for deletion/Mug shot of Donald Trump

and

I thought we'd finally find out whether or not Trump met the medical definition of being morbidly obese after he was arrested at the Fulton County Jail. I know it is usual for those who are arrested to have their height and weight recorded. 

Morpid obesity is now called class III obesity and is defined as follows:

Class III obesity, formerly known as morbid obesity, is a complex chronic disease in which a person has a body mass index (BMI) of 40 or higher or a BMI of 35 or higher and is experiencing obesity-related health conditions. The BMI scale is not always accurate, so healthcare providers may use other tests and tools to assess obesity, such as measuring waist circumference.

Class III obesity can contribute to the development of several serious health conditions, such as Type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The good news is that class III obesity is manageable and treatable. Reference

It was not to be. The authorities allowed him to report his own height and weight.

Former President Donald Trump lost 25 pounds — and gained an inch of height — since April, according to jail records filed Thursday after he surrendered to Fulton County authorities on charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

The 77-year-old’s measurements, which were pre-reported, according to ABC News, indicate that Trump is 215 pounds with a height of 6’3″ —25 pounds lighter and 1 inch taller than when he was booked in Manhattan in April. NY Post article

I found the fact that The New York Post, at least at 5:00 EST, had this as their top story on their website. The article includes several incredulus and sarcastic tweets and comments about this lie and concludes:

“So, he’s lost 25 pounds since he was president is what we are understanding,” CNN host Jake Tapper said, “because he was, I believe, Dr. Ronny Jackson said he weighed something like 242 for his official physical, which people at the time were skeptical of that number.”

Trump’s final physical exam as president, conducted in June of 2020, measured him to be 244 pounds and  6’3’’ tall. Based on body mass index, those measurements would put him in the clinically obese category.

The late night edition of the paper features a full page image of his mug shot. Notable there is the line under the photo with the word "glowers" used to decribe how he looked: "Trump glowers in the first mug shot ever taken of a former president after he was arrested on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 George election."


Click above to enlarge

Did he glower or "strike a glowering pose" that he'd rehearsed in font of a mirror? What's your guess? He knew that the photo would be a big money raiser for him and be use on a wide variety of merch. Do you think he'd just not make sure he was camera ready?

The only glitch in the plan was he didn't prepare for the glaring lighting, possibly a flash, that made his face appear washed out and almost cartoonish.

This is how The Washngton Post decribed the photo in the article 

Once the image was released shortly after Trump’s exit from the jail, it seemed to be mostly of a piece with those of Trump’s rogues’ gallery of co-defendants: banal, badly lit, with the harsh flatness of a drugstore passport snapshot. Dressed in a blue suit with his usual red tie and posed against a gray backdrop, a sullen Trump went with the scowl, glaring up at the camera with beetle-browed fury in a weird mash-up of the 0.5 selfie aesthetic and “Wanted: Dead or Alive” classicism. In the upper left corner, the Fulton County sheriff’s watermark provided the only authorial signature on an otherwise featureless piece of dispiriting iconography.

Trump lied saying he never heard the word mug shot (now universally understood to refer to a booking photo) when speaking before he left Atlanta. He said never heard the words at the Wharton School of Finance. It's impossible anyone who watches as much TV as he does never to have heard  mug shot. As usual he touted going to the presigious Wharton School of Finance at the Ivy Leage University of Pennsylvania. In fact this is a prestigious graduate school and Trump only was an undergradutate transfer student from Fordham there getting a bachelors degree in economics. This is a far cry from getting a graduate MBA degree at one of the top business school in the country. 

For more about this exaggeration read this article:


The Murdoch owned Fox News website had the story about his height and weight this morning but in a less prominent position. Fox News highlighted the mug shot story on the top of their website calling it the "mug shot drama".

Click about to read article about Trump's weight

Less sensational media aren't featuring stories as prominently ahout Trump's mug shot and how he is trying to sell merch with.

The New York City tabloid competing on the newstands and in the kiosks in the anti-Trump Daily News. This is their overnight front page. It also features the mug shot but makes a strong editorial comment.



The New York Tmes had a story about the mug shot but far down their main page:
Click to read (subscription)


Excerpt: As soon as it was taken, it became the de facto picture of the year. A historic image that will be seared into the public record and referred to for perpetuity — the first mug shot of an American president, taken by the Fulton County, Ga., Sheriff’s Office after Donald J. Trump’s fourth indictment. Though because it is also the only mug shot, it may be representative of all of the charges.

As such, it is also a symbol of either equality under the law or the abuse of it — the ultimate memento of a norm-shattering presidency and this social-media-obsessed, factionalized age.

“It’s dramatically unprecedented,” said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University. “Of all the millions, maybe billions of photos taken of Donald Trump, this could stand as the most famous. Or notorious.” It is possible, he added, that in the future the mug shot will seem the ultimate bookend to a political arc in the United States that began decades ago, with Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.
The only glower that came near to Trump's for gloweryness was Rudy's:

Jenna Ellis looked like she was posing for the high school yearbook photo she missed since she and her two brothers were homeschooled by their parents (Reference):
More of the photos and various ways each person tried to pose:

Read the HUFFPOST article about each of the people pictured above.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who will have the most famous mug shot of them all?

Click to enlarge

Addendum:

Whether Trump's Twitter (X) return was a triumph or a twizzler tease reamins to be seen. No doubt he'll have a bigger audience than he had on Truth Social. It will open him to having less than lauditory replies posted in atrticles like this one from HUFFPOST:

I never joined Truth Social (it requires an email and phone number) so now I can post my own replies to what Trump puts on social media - maybe some will be republished.



Now we are learning that

Trump shakes up potential Truth Social merger with return to ex-Twitter...

I like that term ex-Twitter, aka known as X Twitter. Stay turned...


Which Trump will America get? Will it be the forgiving benevolent Trump or the revenge fueled monster? By Hal M. Brown, MSW

  Perchance Photo AI can give us images of who Trump will turn out to be, but it can't predict.  No ifs, ands, or buts, and no what'...