Donald Trump’s presidential campaign announced Sunday that it has raised $7.1 million since publishing the criminal photo of the former Republican president after he was briefly arrested and later released on bail in Georgia on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
The campaign quickly adopted the image in which Trump appeared grim, the first image of a former president under arrest, and made it a symbol of his election campaign in his quest to return to the White House in 2024.
“Nearly $20 million has been raised in the past three weeks in conjunction with the indictment in Washington and the Atlanta criminal profile,” campaign spokesman Stephen Chung.
He added that it had collected 7.1 million since Thursday (Atlanta photo) 4.18 million only yesterday, which is the highest number collected in a day since the launch of the campaign.
He pointed out that “natural donations soared, especially after Trump published the mugshot in a tweet attached to the website address”.
On the X platform, Chung urged the American media to continually publish the photo, accompanying the post with what he said was a high-quality version of the photo.
Within hours of the former president’s arrest, Trump’s team printed the criminal image, now the most famous image in American history, on T-shirts, cups, soft drink boxes and other merchandise.
It was noted that the police logo that appeared in the photo published by the authorities was absent from that printed on posters and goods.
While such an image would kill any other political candidate, for the 77-year-old Trump it served to reinforce his narrative as a heroic and defiant victim.
Marketing experts likened the image to the “Hope” poster of Barack Obama during his successful campaign for the 2008 presidential elections.
However, Democrats also used the image to indicate that no one is above the law.
As for President Joe Biden, he ignored the image in his remarks to reporters on Friday and said jokingly, “I saw it on TV… He’s a handsome man”.
