Last night President Trump turned himself in for booking in the criminal case brought in Georgia by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. I wrote briefly about the indictment in “Take a load off Fani,” John at greater length in “I read the Georgia indictment so you don’t have to.” Trump is the lead defendant in the case, but he is supported by a large cast of co-defendants including Mark Meadows and John Eastman.

One of Willis’s objects in the case is the humiliation of President Trump. Now Trump has posed for a mug shot and posted bail. It’s historic!

The mug shot incites a certain kind of sensual thrill among the mainstream press and its consumers. The spectacle puts me in mind of Lincoln’s famous 1855 letter to his old friend Joshua Speed about the Know Nothing Party (as in the original): “When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.” I hesitate to say that Willis and the other Trump prosecutors don’t know the damage they are doing. They just don’t care.