Trump gives mugshot T-shirt to Logan Paul: ‘This is what we’re reduced to’

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free Inside Washington email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Donald Trump has promoted his upcoming interview with Logan Paul on his Impaulsive podcast by appearing in a video in which he presents the host with a pair of MAGA caps and two T-shirts bearing the infamous mugshot from his arraignment in Fulton County, Georgia, last summer.

In a brief promotional clip for the episode, which was due to drop later on Thursday, the Republican presidential candidate and convicted felon appears with Paul and co-host Mike Majlak in a wood-panelled room at Mar-a-Lago, prominently lined with bottles of Paul’s Prime Hydration energy drink, and presents them with a fistful of merchandise.

“They sell for a lot of money, these things,” Trump says.

“Is this your mugshot? Oh my god, you’re a gangster!” Paul laughs in disbelief as he unfolds one of the two shirts – one white, one black – which bear the former president’s mugshot and the slogan “Never Surrender”.

“Yeah it is,” Trump replies, somewhat ruefully.

“Can you believe it? This is what we’re reduced to…”

Addressing the infamous glowering police photograph, which Trump has used prominently as part of his fundraising efforts since it was taken, he tells Paul and Majlak: “Well Elvis had one, Frank Sinatra had one, but we’ve eclipsed them. A long time ago we’ve eclipsed them.”

Paul, a huge social media celebrity turned WWE wrestler, also posted a photograph of a grinning Trump posing with his championship belt, which attracted a deluge of criticism from his followers, as well as a further clip on the Impaulsive X feed in which he and Trump discuss the possibility of getting Joe Biden to appear on the show, rating his chances at “less than one per cent”

For his part, Trump posted a short video on his new TikTok account of himself and Paul squaring up to each other before breaking up into hysterical laughter, a slightly eerie spectacle given how rare it is to see the former president in such a natural and unguarded moment.

Trump has been busily touring conservative media to plead his innocence in the wake of his guilty conviction at his New York hush money trial late last month, insisting baselessly that the proceedings held at Manhattan Criminal Court were “rigged” by President Biden and his political enemies to smear him and keep away from the campaign trail.

But he has also been courting new audiences in search of fresh support outside of his MAGA movement with one eye on November’s election: addressing libertarians in Washington DC, joining TikTok in the hope of reaching Gen-Z and posting specific ads targeting Black and Latino support on Truth Social.

His reaching out to Paul represents a further attempt to tap into the YouTuber’s enormous online following in pursuit of potential votes.