(This article was first posted in the Signal to Noise substack – reposted with permission.)

As much as we lionize Donald Trump as a superior mind and 5G chess master, for the most part, what makes him exceptional is his constant dishing out of unapologetic common sense – something that is not so common, anymore.

Also, DTJ is not infallible, and is liable to make mistakes and wrong moves.

But every now and then, a situation arises that allows him to show some mad game-theory skills and portray his mastery of the information war.

That was the case with the ‘mugshot for the ages’, a real masterclass in the art of the political counterpunch.

In boxing, a counterpunch is a blow that immediately follows an attack launched by an opponent. It exploits the opening created in an opponent’s guard.

It’s all about timing.

It’s also one of the hardest and most important skills to learn, because the best time to hit your opponent is when he’s throwing a punch at you

In other words: every time someone attacks you, they open up a window of opportunity like no other for ‘retribution’.

Take, for example, Trump’s recent arrest and indictment in Fulton County, Georgia.

It’s what a conservative analyst called ‘the most brazenly political prosecution yet – a tall order given the litany of ludicrous charges which have already befallen the ex-Commander in Chief’.

It was The (Mug)Shot Heard Around The World.

In the other 3 fake prosecutions of DJT, the ‘authorities’ had the sense of not making a ‘mugshot’ out of him, afraid that he would exploit it politically.

Oh, boy – were they right.

Fulton Co. DA, Fani Willis, on the other hand, wanted to humble DTJ, humiliate him, cut him down to size.

That was a BIG miscalculation. Our enemies just don’t know when to stop – due to their ‘sunk cost fallacy’, they have to proceed in their folly even if it’s to their big disadvantage.

As for Trump, he is a ‘moves and countermoves’ guy, and was going to prove so yet again.

To begin with, he dodged the GOP debate designed as a perfect opportunity to have the ‘also-ran’ political midgets attack him.

Instead, he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, in what became the most watched interview of all times, currently at 260M views.

That, alone, was a perfect power play – but the best was yet to come.

After surrendering in Fulton, being processed and booked, and having his mugshot released, DJT engaged in what can be seen as a masterful counterpunch: he got back on Twitter/X, where he had not posted since January 2021, and shared his mugshot in a post that, by now, has had over 240M views.

That’s half a billion views in just a couple of days!

X’s owner, Elon Musk, reacted by saying that was ‘next level’. And it was.

The reaction all over American society – and the world – was immediate. DJT’s ‘street-cred’ went through the roof, and his popularity and vote intention – as measured by the polls – keeps growing by the hour.

The art of the counterpunch is real, and former President Donald John Trump is a master of it. He is winning the information war by a country mile, and his supporters are electrified like never before.

None of this, of course, guarantees his victory on election day – there still need to be a host of countermeasures to keep Democrats from stealing yet another vote.

But without this clear and unmistakable lead in the public opinion forum, he wouldn’t have a fighting chance – and now he does.

For every punch, there is a counterpunch.

That’s what Trumps enemies can’t seem to learn, to his advantage, fuelling our hope that the real American leader will be back in power next year.