Media To Benefit From Another Trump Bump As Interest Spikes

by  Katharina Buchholz, Statista

Former President Donald Trump showed up for his fourth appearance in a criminal case in just five months at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta last night. The booking process was speedy and Trump was in and out of the building in just 20 minutes. Nevertheless, the Georgia case on election interference once again sparked more public interest than previous ones - likely connected to the first mug shot taken of Trump as part of the proceedings, which promptly led to his first tweet since 2021. The picture is believed to be the first mug shot ever taken of a U.S. president. An arraignment is expected in the week of Sept. 5.

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As seen in Google Trends data, Trump's first criminal indictment and arraignment in late March and early April at the Manhattan Criminal Court caused the biggest public interest so far. The former president is being accused in the case brought by the state of New York of falsifying business records in order to conceal crimes. Subsequent indictments - two by the Justice Department's Special Counsel Jack Smith brought in Miami and Washington D.C. to do with Trump's handling of classified documents and the January 6 Capitol riot - sparked less interest. Google search volume only reached 51-64 percent of the week of Trump's first criminal indictment for the Miami case in early June and only 37 percent for the D.C. case in early August. As of the early morning of Aug. 25, search interest was predicted to rise sharply again this week in the aftermath of the Georgia booking.