The intimate photograph that captures Trump’s hunger, just as his bubble bursts

October 18, 2026 — 3:23pm

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Sometimes a candid photograph captures a moment in a presidency, and the essence of the officeholder, so tellingly that you get a penetrating portrait of an era.

It happened when LBJ yanked up his beagle by the ears for photographers and demonstrated his domineering leadership style.

It happened when a photographer captured George W. Bush being told, while reading to children in a Florida classroom, that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. His look of shock raised questions about whether, after his decades of winging it, a parlous rendezvous with destiny might be too much for him to handle.

It happened when Barack Obama was photographed bending over in the Oval to let a Black child touch his hair, to see if it was the same texture as his own, capturing the historic nature of his election.

It happened again when Doug Mills, The New York Times′ dazzling White House photographer, took a picture on Tuesday of President Donald Trump on Marine One with his blonde aides/acolytes Katie Zacharia, his then press secretary, and Natalie Harp, his special assistant for floofing.

Mills took the shot from far away with a long lens, but it bristles with intimacy.

The president is leaning in to talk to the two Ivanka knockoffs, who look like sorority-sister clones, four eyes glued on the man they adore, two fervent smiles glazed with pink lip gloss.

It is a snapshot of Trump’s hunger for adulation that has dragged us to this fraught moment in America.

He desperately craves being the centre of attention and seeing blind........

© Brisbane Times