He’s Back. You Know Who. You Know Where.
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe Jarring Lesson of Trump’s Return to Twitter, On Trump’s inevitable return to Twitter, and why it still managed to shock., Trump returned to Twitter by posting his mug shot. It was inevitable—and still shocking.
On the day that Donald Trump left office, we still didn’t know what would become of him. For my part, I wrote about why I thought, if he even wanted to, he could never go back up the escalator of Trump Tower to his old life. We’d seen too much, I argued:
At that point, I had spent too much of my life as a relatively young journalist chronicling the misbehaviors of Donald Trump, and the pathology of all of us who couldn’t turn away. On the day he left office—two weeks after he directed a mob to the U.S. Capitol, one week after his second impeachment—I was hopeful that he had finally flown close enough to the sun to get scorched.
I thought about this on Thursday night, when Donald Trump was booked at the Fulton County Jail. Soon after he was booked, his mug shot was released to the public. It’s a gnarly photo, and it seems obvious that this was Trump’s plan. Look tough, look mad. Snarl. The results speak for themselves. He achieved what he set out to do.
Everyone knew that as soon as the mug shot came out, the Trump team would turn it into merch. It would do this for multiple reasons, perhaps most usefully as a fundraiser for his cash-strapped campaign (and legal defense needs). But more importantly, it would reclaim the mug shot as MAGA’s own. That’s what the Trump endeavor has always been about—subverting what we take seriously into some sort of twisted joke to ‘own the libs.’ The image that resulted from the former president directly trying to conquer democracy would certainly be no different.
What I wasn’t expecting was for Donald Trump to choose the same occasion to reappear on Twitter—or, more accurately, to premiere on X. The most jarring thing about his resurfacing on the social network is that all his old tweets are still there. Maybe they’ve been there the whole time. I haven’t been checking. But what I do know is that now, right under the mug shot posted with a promise to never surrender (he had literally just surrendered—classic Trump), were his tweets from Jan. 8 announcing that he would NOT be attending the inauguration, and, just two more tweets back, his actual tweets from Jan. 6 itself, which are themselves tortured documents to reconsider.
You have to hand it to the man: Even though X may be a platform that feels suspended in decline, this was the perfect time to return. It’s not just the layers of taunting irony in getting booked for the crimes that are now being readvertised on his feed. It’s an escalation of his Wednesday night choice to skip the Republican debate in favor of participating in a long-winded and mostly pointless Tucker Carlson interview. This is a man with an absolutely pathological capacity to take up space in the room, even rooms he isn’t in. Everyone felt it on Wednesday when he didn’t bother to show up to the debate; similarly, the effect of him finally posting on Twitter mostly had the effect of reminding us how much better the platform had felt without him. This is a man who relishes pushing his way into the psychological chambers of every possible person around him, whether you love him or hate him, but particularly if you hate him. It’s what living through the Trump presidency felt like, this always there–ness, and it’s one thing we’re bracing for if it comes to pass again.
What’s amazing is that the circumstances today are so different than they were two years ago, when he was kicked off Twitter, or seven years ago, when he actually won the election and shocked the world. We are all so much wearier these days, having lived through that presidency and its many crimes, a global pandemic, a major racial reckoning, the results of which are still unclear. Donald Trump’s return to Twitter is maybe just another reason to leave X for good. That place, after what it has become under its current management? He can have it.
I’m still optimistic that something will come of all these cases, that the mug shot will be more than a meme. The law is slow; it is just finally catching up. But I think the thing I didn’t quite understand, couldn’t quite understand, is that it doesn’t matter how many people are watching Trump in disapproval. As much as he loves his adoring fans, contempt is actually the thing this man thrives on, I think, and now he is back, pushing his way into our election and our psyches even as he has been exposed and arrested four times over. Just to prove he still can. Our looking only ever leads to a bigger and bigger and bigger show, and the man is back on his favorite stage.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/08/trump-returned-twitter-mug-shot.html
Ref: slate
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