How long have Democrats been trying to throw anything up against the wall when it comes to former President Donald Trump, trying to make something stick? They’ve been trying to get him for years, with the ready assistance of the liberal media in the effort. And now that they may have finally gotten an indictment in a turkey of a case, they’re beginning to become concerned that this is already backfiring on them, that what they’ve done may just be making him stronger for 2024 and he may prevail over them.

CNN commentator/Democratic operative David Axelrod urged the authorities not to release Trump’s mugshot because it might make him even more iconic.

Libs on CNN with the most unhinged Freudian slip of all time as they PANIC that if Trump's mugshot is made public it will expose their indictment as purely political.

They're worried about the *PR* aspect of imploding the US justice system into a Stalinist circus. pic.twitter.com/64hNkCvyZH

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 31, 2023

“One thing I want to say about how he [Trump] is handled on Tuesday if I were the DA, if I were to advise him, and I’m not a lawyer, I’m a political strategist, but I would give him every courtesy that I could. I would certainly not handcuff him. I think he would love that picture,” Axelrod said. “I would make very sure that that booking photo is not released. He would turn it into t-shirts and turn himself into Che Guevara there as an iconic image.”

Trump might have t-shirts, but he wouldn’t turn himself into a murdering Communist, that’s something that would only appeal to Democrats and other leftists. But, ironically, they’ve been trying to get him for years and now they’re talking about him claiming “martyrdom”? I think he has every right to claim it because he’s been unjustly targeted for years because he poses an obstacle to the Democrats. Imagine them targeting him for years, and then having the gall to act aggrieved that he might call them on it.

Axelrod wasn’t the only person CNN had pushing this thought about the mugshot. There was also CNN’s presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who claimed that it would be a historical “artifact.”

“Now we’re set up to see the biggest reality show that’s come to life … I can’t even think of an artifact except maybe ‘Wanted: John Wilkes Booth’ after the Lincoln assassination of a wanted poster or a mug shot that’s going to be circulating around the world in a kind of way this one of Donald Trump is,” Brinkley said during an appearance on CNN.

If the comparison to a presidential assassin wasn’t bad enough, Brinkley also went over the edge saying it was stirring “neo-civil war.”

That’s all hilarious. You all wanted this for so long, now you’re trying to backpedal because you’re worried about the effect of what you pushed for? They’re only worried — as they always are — that they may not be able to defeat a now even more powerful Trump. As I reported, it’s already buttressing him in the polls, helping him storm to a huge lead over his closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

They also may not be wrong about the mugshot making him even more iconic, as Fox News host Pete Hegseth opined to Sean Hannity. “If this is not a closed-ranks moment, then I don’t know what is,” Hegseth said on Thursday.

This is a watershed moment for America. The Left wants to see Donald Trump's face on a mugshot.

Well, get ready because it'll be a poster in every college dorm room and be used as a BIG middle finger to the corporate elite. They're going to make him a HERO. pic.twitter.com/zT6hjb6oqB

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) March 31, 2023

“This was a horrible night for our Republic. But politically, a great night for Donald Trump,” Hegseth continued. Hegseth said that if there was a mugshot of Trump it would be in “dorm rooms and on T-shirts” making him a hero. “And rightfully so,” Hegseth declared, as the audience clapped. “Because he’s become a symbol of what elites and those obsessed with power are willing to do when they have that power.” And what they are willing to do to retain that power when they think they might lose it to their political opposition.

“It will be the symbol. He will be the Republican nominee. Americans will rally around him because he stood for things they believe in and they came after him because they want to come after you, and all of us,” Hegseth said.

The Democrats set this ride in motion. They’re the ones who tripped over the line, ripping apart the rule of law by targeting a political opponent and trying to make us into a banana republic. They can’t back out and pretend, now that it’s backfiring on them.