Whitlock: The Trump mug shot could make the former president Tupac Shakur and Abraham Lincoln

The blacklash of martyring Donald Trump is a real thing.

The former president’s mug shot from a Fulton County jail has given black men the space to abandon the cosplay of painting Trump as the second coming of Adolf Hitler. The trumped-up persecution of America’s 45th president has turned Trump into the avatar for rebellion.

Fani Willis, the Atlanta prosecutor, transformed Trump into Tupac, not Martin Luther King Jr. She unwittingly invited Trump to the proverbial “cookout.”

The crude and now infamous “N****s for Trump 2024” T-shirt worn by Derrick Gibson captures the sentiment of working-class black men.

“I’m here to support President Trump,” Gibson told an interviewer on the day Trump’s arrest. “You know why I’m here to support President Trump? Because they done did black men like this for decades – make up charges. I know Trump is innocent. I support Trump against the corrupt, two-tiered justice system. That’s why I’m here showing my support for Trump as a black man. And I’m wearing my shirt n****s for Trump 2024, and I mean that.”

I’m not a fan of Gibson’s T-shirt. But I recognize its commercial appeal. It will be wildly popular. White Trump supporters will mimic it with slogans like “Neighbors for Trump 2024.”

Americans love to rebel. It’s in our blood. This Trump-led rebellion will only grow stronger. I say that because Trump isn’t really leading this rebellion. He’s just the avatar, the symbol.

The fuel to this fire is a spiritual awakening, a realization that the political establishment has created a culture that is completely out of line with God’s design. What’s driving this awakening are drag queens at schools, the debate about a gender spectrum, men invading women’s sports, young children choosing their gender and being surgically transitioned, Hollywood elites pandering to the Alphabet Mafia, and the pervasive hostility toward heterosexual men of faith.

It’s impossible to deny the wickedness of liberal culture. The targeting and sexual grooming of kids cannot be ignored. The attack on religious faith is too obvious.

Derrick Gibson can’t articulate it, but he feels it. The black heterosexual man has been totally emasculated. He answers to the black woman. He’s denied leadership and any position of real authority. He’s been replaced by the black woman because she’s far more easy to control and manipulate.

“[Fani Willis] is a puppet for the white liberal that’s controlling everything,” Gibson said. “She’s in front, but the white liberal is back there pulling those strings, telling her what to do.”

In my opinion, Gibson believes the same thing about Barack Obama’s presidency. Obama empowered the LGBTQ and paved the path for three lesbian Marxists to create the Black Lives Matter movement. It was all a scam.

The martyring of Trump is allowing black men to publicly recognize that the real battle isn’t black vs. white. The real battle is between man and woman over dominion of the earth. The real war is good vs. evil, God vs. Satan, the patriarchy vs. the matriarchy.

There are political consequences to this realization.

Yesterday, I hosted a two-hour discussion on Twitter Spaces debating whether black people will abandon the Democratic Party in favor of Trump in the 2024 election cycle. Several of the contributors to my show, “Fearless,” participated in the open forum. It was a lively and substantive debate.

I’m still not convinced we’re going to see a large number of black men pull the lever for Trump. The social, relationship, and employment consequences are steep for black men who reject liberalism. It harms your dating options with black women. It adds a thick layer of tension with family members and friends. Within the black church, it places you at odds with most of the congregation. It diminishes your chances of ascending to leadership positions at work.

Many black Trump supporters have to overhaul their social circles. Wearing a rebellious T-shirt supporting Trump isn’t nearly as risky as legitimately rejecting liberalism.

I think we’re going to see an uptick in black men choosing not to vote. That’s the compromise they’ll make to keep the peace in their personal lives and avoid supporting Joe Biden, Gavin Newsom, or Michelle Obama.

I plan to vote for the first time in my life. I’ll vote MAGA. I want to rebel. I want to be part of a blacklash. I want to send a message to the political establishment, both Democrat and Republican.

Regardless of what happens in the election, I feel a bit more optimistic seeing black men wake up to the fraudulence and wickedness of liberalism and racial identity politics.

If the martyring of Trump contributes to the spiritual awakening of black men, he’s the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.