In the video, two trucks decorated with giant Trump flags and altered American flags are driving on a highway. On the tailgate door of one of the trucks is the image of Biden lying horizontally, bound and gagged.
Similar images of Biden have been circulating on social media for months, if not years, on sites including Instagram, Reddit and Twitter, before the platform changed its name to X. In February, the popular World Star Hip Hop site posted a video of a truck it said was in California featuring such an image.
A spokesman for Trump’s campaign did not immediately return an email on Friday seeking comment. A spokesperson for Biden’s campaign also did not immediately respond to an email.
Trump has a history of sharing and promoting violent images featuring his perceived enemies.
In October, Trump shared a doctored video of him hitting a golf ball that hits Biden and knocks him down. (It was similar to a doctored video he shared in 2017, hitting a golf ball into the back of Hillary Clinton, who falls down as a result.) In April 2023, a judge issued a warning to Trump after an image of him holding a bat next to an image of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) was shared from one of the former president’s verified accounts.
In July 2017, Trump shared a video of himself at a professional wrestling match, beating up a man whose face is covered with the CNN logo. The verified account for CNN’s communication team responded to the video with a quote from Trump’s White House spokeswoman at the time, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, falsely claiming Trump “in no way form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.”
Earlier this month, Trump told supporters in Ohio that some immigrants who are accused of crimes are “not people,” and warned it will be a “bloodbath for the country” if he is not elected.
The latest episode has coincided with Trump’s increasing use of violent and hostile rhetoric as he seeks to return to the White House. In December, he told people in New Hampshire that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country” — a phrase that immigrant groups and civil rights advocates condemned and said was reminiscent of Hitler telling Germans, in his book “Mein Kampf,” to “care for the purity of their own blood” by eliminating Jews.
Trump held his first rally of this campaign season in March 2023, in Waco, Tex., a city made famous decades earlier for the deadly showdown between FBI officials and cult members that helped fuel the anti-government militia movement. At the rally, Trump played a song sung by people held in prison for crimes related to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a group he has since repeatedly referred to as “patriots,” and “hostages.”
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
Apsny News English
