CNN's Kaitlan Collins & Sara Murray whine Trump will use his mugshot to raise money for his campaign and wonder if it's a good idea for him to be given one. pic.twitter.com/2xTGYQpgFc

— Kevin Tober (@KevinTober94) August 24, 2023

“Trump himself has been not downplaying this. I mean, he has certainly seen how he uses these exact moments to his political advantage,” Collins noted.

Murray agreed and openly questioned the “value” of snapping Trump’s mug shot and releasing it to the public.

“He does use these. I mean, he uses these for fundraising. He uses these to rally his base,” she said. “I mean, that’s one of the questions about the sort of value of a mug shot in this case, right? Sure, it’s treating Donald Trump, if he does get one, the same as any other defendant. But you are also giving him a photo that there is no doubt that he is going to use on promotional material, he’s going to use on fundraising material.”

[No, we don’t really need to do this, especially not in the wild-stretch Georgia case. We didn’t need mug shots of those who didn’t actually commit crimes in this case but got indicted for “racketeering” for legal advice or being outspoken about their beliefs that the outcome in Georgia was corrupted — even if it wasn’t true. But since Fulton County’s DA decided to go down this road, welcome to the blowback. — Ed]