An MSNBC anchor had to suppress a laugh on air Thursday while reporting that former president Donald Trump was expected to surrender at a Georgia jail with a history of stabbings.
Trump was set to surrender at "a jail that is accustomed to holding defendants facing charges up to and including violent crimes, where stabbings are frequent," said host Nicolle Wallace. "Actually, three people have lost their lives over the last month."
"That jail," Wallace said while stifling a laugh, "is where the disgraced ex-president of these United States is heading right now."
Trump did not spend any time in the jail after he surrendered on Thursday, because he and his lawyers had agreed prior to the booking to post a $200,000 bond.
Throughout Trump’s indictment saga, Democrats and members of the media have found it difficult to suppress their glee at the legal troubles of the former president.
The Associated Press’s Jonathan J. Cooper described Trump’s mug shot released Thursday as "an enduring image that will appear in history books long after Donald Trump is gone" because it showed "the trappings of power gone, for that split second." The Lincoln Project posted a video of people celebrating at a bar, edited to look like they were reacting to Trump's mug shot.
Panelists on MSNBC and CNN also mocked Trump's self-reported measurements that appeared on his arrest record, which listed him as six feet three inches tall, 215 pounds, and having "blonde or strawberry" hair. When Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis first indicted Trump and his allies on RICO charges, a number of media members gleefully observed that prosecutors normally use such charges to indict mobsters.
President Joe Biden's reelection campaign immediately used Trump's surrender as a fundraising opportunity.
"Apropos of nothing, I think today's a great day to give to my campaign," Biden posted on the social media site X along with a donation link.