Since he was arraigned in Georgia on Thursday, conservatives have been falling all over each other to fawn over Donald Trump’s historic mug shot. But none have fallen quite as hard as Fox News’ Jesse Watters, judging from the comments he made Friday about the photo.
Trump surrendered Thursday evening in Fulton County, Georgia, where he and 18 accomplices face multiple felony charges stemming from the investigation of his role in the campaign to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Afterward, the mugshot became a meme, while Trump himself was widely mocked for describing himself as weighing 215 pounds and having “strawberry” hair. Because, you know, blatant lies.
But in conservative media circles, the order of the day has been to ignore the evidence of one’s own eyes and instead talk about Trump as if he’s a pinup model. For instance, on Fox News, where Watters gushed about how the disgraced former president looked in what is arguably the world’s most famous mugshot.
“I am now going to book the Fulton County photographer for my Christmas card,” Watters said on Fox News’ ‘The Five.’ “Because judge, and I say this with a unblemished record of heterosexuality, he looks good. And he looks hard.”
Watch it here, via Acyn:
Of course, as we noted, Watters is far from the only conservative to rave about the quadruple indictee’s mugshot.
There’s convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza, who was pardoned by Trump in 2020. In an apparent show of gratitude, D’Souza compared him — and he wasn’t kidding — to Tupac Shakur, calling him “the ultimate gangsta in our culture.”
Sure. Ok.
And in a twofer, here’s conservative commentator Rod Dreher insisting that support for Trump is now “the punkest thing” and a way to show “disgust with the ruling class,” while quoting conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who describes the mugshot as “instantly iconic.”
If you’re unfamiliar with Dreher, just know two things. First, he’s a supporter and advocate of autocratic right wing Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, so much that he moved to Hungary after his divorce. And second, earlier this year, he lost his main source of income after he wrote a post about a Black elementary school classmate’s penis that used extremely racist language, prompting the conservative billionaire who bankrolled him to pull funding.
And there’s also the conservative publication DC Examiner, which had some, uh, takes on the mugshot and the public reaction to it.
But Watters is the only one so far to describe Trump as “hard.”
