CNN’s Jake Tapper Asks Maggie Haberman How Trump Felt Getting Booked at ‘Shockingly Awful’ Jail
CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked analyst Maggie Haberman how ex-President Donald Trump felt as he was booked at the “shockingly awful” Fulton County jail.
Trump became the first U.S. president to pose for a mugshot as he was arrested Thursday in Fulton County, Georgia on 13 counts related to election crimes in a sweeping RICO case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
The arrest was a three-ring media circus in which every detail was covered in breathless real-time — especially the mugshot.
Special coverage of the arrest continued on Thursday night’s edition of CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, during which Tapper asked Haberman — a noted Trumpologist with insights informed by decades of coverage and a network of sources — what it must have been like for Trump at a jail that has been generously described as a “hellhole”:
TAPPER: Yes. Doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not somebody thinks Donald Trump is guilty or not guilty. This is just a question of law. And the law would seem to say there’s a plausible case that a judge will rule that it does belong in federal court.
The jail, Fulton County Jail that Donald Trump was processed at, today, we’ve been noting that it’s notorious for its harsh conditions. The Justice Department is investigating it. Prisoners, more regularly than they should, die while in custody.
We’ve saw images, earlier today, Drew Griffin, our reporter — I’m sorry, Brian Todd, our reporter, showed us images of the inside of the jail. And it’s shockingly awful.
What do you imagine that experience was like, for Donald Trump, who I think has probably never been inside a building, like that before?
HABERMAN: I don’t think he has. No, Jake, I can’t imagine any circumstance in his life that we’re unaware of, where he would have been. I think it was jarring.
I think we should note that he was there, pretty briefly. His aides filled out the paperwork, about his vitals, his weight, his height, and so forth, his eye color, all the things that are there, ahead of time, and it expedited the process. But I think even briefly, it’s a very jarring experience.
As we said before, this is not something that he’s craving. I understand that he is using the mug shot, politically. It would be very surprising were he not. When there wasn’t a mug shot in Manhattan, when he was indicted, and then arrested in April? They generated a fake one. So, it’s not a surprise that he’s using it.
But this is not an experience that he wants. This is an experience that I think brings home the stark reality of what this is, which is a criminal case.
And, to your point, about where he was headed, today, and how grim the circumstances are, and how grim the location was? They’ve done very little.
They’ve had sort of descending appearances, and public statements, from him, since the second indictment. Where the second indictment he had yet another, as he did with the first one, an event, at one of his clubs, and he gave a big speech, a very defiant speech? He hasn’t done that the last few times. And I think that is partly a recognition of A, diminishing returns, possibly in fundraising, but also concern that his legal team has about some of what he is saying, both in terms of possibly violating the conditions, of his release, in these cases. And in terms of saying things that could be problematic in court.
And that just again, this is dealing with something real. This is not politics. This is not a game. We don’t know what will happen, in these cases. And he has the presumption of innocence, just like any other defendant. But this is a serious thing.
Watch above via CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins.
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