Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Lies, statistics, and official records

We begin today with Vinson Cunningham of The New Yorker reading of Number 45’s mugshot.

Just look at the impenitent subject: the deep furrow between his eyebrows and the one that contours his cheek seem to want to connect and form a kind of scar in shadow. One thing that the picture makes plain—not for the first time, but in a definitive way that won’t soon be forgotten—is how many of Trump’s cues are cribbed directly and consciously from the cinematic literature of romanticized criminals. Trump’s the kind of guy who thinks Scorsese movies are straightforward celebrations of tough guys on the come-up; here’s how you make it in America if you’ve got enough guff and a high tolerance for trouble. He seems to have styled himself, for a long time now, after the “goodfellas,” let some of their leering rhythms slip into his facial bearing and his speech. (His actual ties to the Mob, which he has denied, in its palsying days in eighties and nineties New York and New Jersey have been a rich field of speculation, but that’s a topic for another day.) This mug shot’s been a long time coming—it is, perhaps, the point toward which the entire asymptote of Trump’s life has bowed. He might be angry in the mug shot; he may well be scared. But he damn sure doesn’t look surprised. Nobody is.

Far from surprise: can there be any doubt that, hours before his surrender, before the camera ever flashed, Trump stood in front of some gold-framed mirror and practiced this lipless pout? He knows better than anybody that his supporters—who still make up the formidable majority of the Republican primary electorate—will take this picture and make it a banner. He’s a gossipy seventy-seven-year-old man who allegedly makes weird, lusty comments about his daughter, dances like a windup toy whenever he hears the song “Macho Man,” and still, in the autumn of his life, needlessly lies about his weight whenever he gets a chance. (In Georgia, when he gave himself up, Trump—whose form was reportedly filled out in advance by aides—was listed as six-three and two hundred and fifteen pounds; if this were true, he’d be the same weight and an inch taller than Lamar Jackson, the über-athletic Baltimore Ravens quarterback, who looks like a contemporary update of Michelangelo’s David.) Still, displaying a pathology that feels libidinal in deep origin, his supporters, throughout the past eight years, have tended to insist on a vision of Trump as a somewhat hunky fighting figure, ready to re-tame the American frontier and take the country back from his enemies on behalf of the “forgotten man.” Trump has incorporated this veneration into his idea of himself, reminding audiences everywhere that he is fighting for them, has been striped by a whip meant for their backs, is on the front line, taking oncoming fire to secure their freedom.

Snopes listed the claim as true! Both claims are now listed as official records now.