We were told it was happening, and now it’s happened. Kim Kardashian actually met Donald Trump to discuss prison reform and sentencing, a topic on which Trump’s views tend to skew somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.
The proof is in the pudding: this incredibly absurd photo, where absolutely no one is having a particularly good time.
Great meeting with @KimKardashian today, talked about prison reform and sentencing. pic.twitter.com/uOy4UJ41JF
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2018
As we reported yesterday, Kardashian is agitating for one outcome in particular: the release of 62-year-old Alice Marie Johnson, who is serving a lifetime sentence for a nonviolent, first time drug offence. Johnson has been in prison for 21 years, and her case recently came onto Kim’s radar.
But let’s dispense with the subject of the meeting for a moment. We hope and pray that Kim K’s intervention amounts to something, because it’s obviously a heinous miscarriage of justice and it’s clear that Trump loves nothing more than to fish for some positive media when the opportunity presents itself to him. His extreme swing towards law and order politics means it’s unlikely to be extrapolated into broader policy, but if Kim can swing this, then it’s a victory.
Let’s instead focus on the photo itself. Please, bear with me.
I retract my earlier comment that no one seems to having a good time after doing some high-level photo forensics. Kim is definitely not having a good time – in fact, she seems acutely aware that this compulsory photoshoot confers a great deal of brand damage. That seemingly blank look actually conceals the high-level influencer calculations currently going on in her brain on exactly what Instagram post is going to reverse the negative effect.
Trump though? He’s loving it. He’s in the orbit of a celebrity people actually generally like, and his atrophied lizard brain is absolutely frothing on the halo effect it’ll have. He pretended to give a single shit about prison reform for half an hour to get this shot, and it paid off in a big way. Also whatever it is behind his head makes him look like he has horns, so take that as you will.
God, this is a strange timeline.
