Democrats and corporate media pundits are just not happy with how President Donald Trump, and his co-defendants, are treating this latest indictment. Concerned reports out from The New York Times worry that co-defendants are smiling in their mugshots, an event the Times feels should be addressed with more gravity.
A 4-times indicted man is undoubtedly taking this seriously, as are his lawyers and his codefendants. It's the US, however, clear thinking people, who need to take this seriously. There is nothing normal about prosecuting a president, about a president's mug shot being splashed across the media. They want the Democrats' political prosecution of their primary political opponent to make sense, and they think that Trump et al having a more grave face will do that—it won't.
Biden and even some in the GOP state their belief that Trump should take the indictment more seriously, and offer criticisms that Trump is campaign fundraising off the mugshot. All of these people want some reaction from Trump, some indication that he's finally come to understand the gravity of the situation, the seriousness of facing some 600 years in prison were he to be convicted in all 4 cases brought against him.
What they are seeking is a serious face, a grim reaper demeanor, for him to shut down his campaign and focus on these legal woes, for him to hush up and face their version of reality, for him to act like a guilty man. Each of these pundits and their scolding is missing a key point: the indicting regime is not actually prosecuting Trump for criminal charges. They have indicted him for having the audacity to become president, and for having the sheer gaul to seek the White House again.
"The traditional mug shot is usually a grim affair: poorly lit and sullen," The New York Times writes. "It is a permanent portrait of shame — the legal system’s scarlet letter."
"It is, almost by definition, unsmiling."
"But the booking photos emerging from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in Atlanta, where Donald J. Trump and 18 others are being charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, include several that are oddly cheerful."
Instead, as the article notes, the 18 co-defendants in the RICO case against the 2020 Trump campaign and its attorneys are nothing less than outright defiant—and their mugshots, including Trump's, evidence this. Each of the defendants looking at the camera are likely fully aware that they are being prosecuted by the regime of a political enemy. They are being prosecuted for having questioned the regime machine, not for alleged crimes that in point of fact have been committed by plenty of Democrats over the years, all with impunity.
But tit-for-tat is not the point, that's a given at this point. What Democrats accuse conservatives of doing are the very things they have done themselves. Whether it's racism of the falsification of business records or election questioning, Democrats have done the deeds but have simply not been indicted. And now that the charges have been levied, they are still not satisfied.
Like abusive parents who scold and scold only to find their child more and more defiant, more independent, more ready to walk out the door and never turn back, the Democrats and their top cops in Atlanta, New York, along with the federal special counsel, try desperately to wield what they believe to be their own moral authority complete with serious consequences.
The only problem is that their authority it not recognized—no matter how much control they have, no matter how much they jingle their jailer's keys, no matter if they lock these people away. The ills of the system—which Democrats have been calling out for years through the Innocence Project, calls for police reform, and everything else—have been made transparent.
The Democrats don't prosecute criminals, but they prosecute their political opponents. They don't secure the US border but they secure their political enemies with gag orders and indictments. They care nothing for the safety of our cities but ensure the security of their own power.
These cries for Trump to "take this seriously" are an effort to return some kind of normalcy to our fractured, politicized society and culture. The desire for Trump to show more gravitas in the face of these 4 insane, political prosecutions is a desperate wish to retain the normalcy that has been entirely discarded.
As Charlie Kirk said, it's necesary begin "Breaking out of the muscle memory of a country that is long gone. And you should mourn that, by the way, it's not easy." Mourn it, for sure, but know that it's over.
There is no going back to the culture of trust that we lost. Those calling for Trump and his co-defendants to "take this seriously" don't even know what that looks like. They just want it to make sense, but it doesn't make sense, there is nothing American, Constitutional, or sensical about the use of lawfare to prosecute political opponents.
