Screenshot from Alex Stein's story. Pics were taken by @markpetersonpixs

Insta doesn't archive so here's the link: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClCb6GELKYD/

In a gilded, garish ballroom at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night, former president Trump announced that he’s running for office yet again.

The more-than-hour speech was a low-tone version of what the defeated, twice-impeached former president facing mounting legal and political peril has been proclaiming for years: Everything is good when he’s in charge, and everything is awful when he is not.

The most striking part of the night was not what he said or how he said it. The Trump aesthetic has always been a mask, a glitzy, gaudy cover for his angry approach. These images by photographer Mark Peterson (swipe 👈 ) capture the ways in which his most loyal supporters have adopted that paradoxical style as their own: biker vests and brick-wall-patterned suits, bedazzled brooches and purses, a “Let’s Go Brandon” tattoo.

On vivid display was a crowd that was thick with ride-or-die conspiracists and conspicuously light on more prominent and powerful figures from the GOO that he once totally held in his thrall.