Donald Trump held court with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday in the Oval Office. The meeting was largely overshadowed by the ongoing DOGE shenanigans carried out by President Musk this week, though it did feature the most absurdly sycophantic “journalist” question since Lisa Simpson asked Mr. Burns to explain why he’s so popular.
We also had an opportunity to check out the new look for the White House. It’s not Jackie Kennedy showing off new drapes or anything, but it’s a start.
Then Brian Baez noticed something late last night…
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Honestly, I refused to believe it despite trusting Baez’s work. But I fired up our Getty subscription and loaded a high-resolution image from a different angle and…
As they might say on one of those CSI shows… “Zoom in. ENHANCE!”
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Hey defense lawyers? How excited would you be to learn that your client framed their mugshot and hung it up in the office?
That’s the New York Post cover of August 25, 2023 featuring Trump’s mugshot when he turned himself into Fulton County, Georgia authorities. The Oval Office is adorned with official portraits and sculptures of presidents at their most heroic — even if they were, in fact, scumbags — and Trump’s decision is to place his mugshot outside the office as a monument to managing to call election officials to ask them to conjure up non-existent votes and suffer zero consequences.
Presidents normally don’t place portraits of themselves in the White House because that’s a symptom of narcissistic psychosis. Not that there haven’t been presidents with narcissistic psychosis, but they’ve historically had the bare minimum of connection with reality to not celebrate that condition.
Though if a president were to post up a self-portrait, you’d think he’d pick something vaguely flattering. Something, I don’t know, presidential. Not a memento from when they got their buddies convicted. Why would he want to celebrate that every day and — more to the point — remind every dignitary of his felonious background? The most likely reason is that he sees it as an accomplishment. He won. He was hauled into court on serious criminal charges and nothing happened. Even when he lost and got convicted of felonies in another case he still won because nothing happened. He probably wants to remind himself and everyone else that he’s the real Teflon Don.
Look, if he posted that stupid “something nicked my entirely unblemished ear and let’s just pretend it was a bullet” picture it would be childish but at least it supports a messianic narrative. It’s actually sort of telling that he views “beating the rap in Georgia” as more of a monument to his strongman brand than “surviving a failed assassination.” A mugshot that one of his own lawyers admits makes the president look like a Batman villain highlights the gaping chasm where a basic sense of decorum should reside.
But if you’re the kind of guy who reads national security documents on a gold toilet perhaps we ask too much.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.