Former President Donald Trump’s mug shot generated controversy across social media last week.

Trump’s arrest photo was taken Thursday as part of the booking procedures at Fulton County Jail after the 45th president appeared in court on conspiracy and racketeering charges in connection with his efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

A report in The Atlantic said Trump turned the routine of the mug shot into “one more opportunity for brand building.”

“In the portrait—it is a portrait, in the end—Trump glares directly into the camera. He seethes. He glowers. He turns in a studied performance. Photos like this are typically exercises in enforced humility. Trump’s is a display of ongoing power. He treats his mug shot as our menace,” The Atlantic staff writer Megan Garber wrote.

Comedian and actress Roseanne Barr needed a lot fewer words.

“Trump’s mugshot is so hot,” she wrote in a social media.

The comment drew a round of social media applause.

Trump’s campaign said the mug shot was a fundraising gift, according to CBS.

The campaign said it raised $7.1 million since the photo was released,

The campaign said on Saturday alone it took in $4.18 million, making that the highest amount raised in one day for this campaign season.

“Organic money has skyrocketed, especially after President Trump tweeted out the picture along with the website,” a campaign representative said, according to CBS.

The campaign has raised “close to $20 million” in the last three weeks, the representative said – a time in which Trump has been indicted twice.

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said the mug shot was gasoline on the flames of America’s rage.

“For many Trump supporters, it is a moment of gratuitous insult of a president who is now being prosecuted in four different states just before an election where he is the leading Republican candidate. For the most extreme, it will be portrayed as a virtual declaration of war, proof that the establishment will use every means to prevent another 2016 populist victory,” he wrote in a commentary piece posted on Fox News.

“[T]he mugshot will be the rallying cry at both extremes in our political system,” he wrote, adding, “For that reason, I believe the mugshot was a mistake, an inflammatory moment wisely avoided in New York by another Democratic prosecutor. It is entirely unnecessary for the most recognized face in the United States …

“The fact, however, is that many on both sides relish the rage. I have previously said that the most unnerving fact of what I have called ‘the age of rage’ is that people secretly enjoy it. Rage is addictive. It allows people to say and do things that they would ordinarily avoid in public. It is a license to hate blindly and excuse all means to achieve an end,” Turkey wrote.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.