Trump posts video with an image of hogtied Biden, drawing rebuke from president’s campaign
WASHINGTON — Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has drawn criticism for posting a video on social media that contains the image of a hogtied President Biden painted on the tailgate of a passing truck.
The Biden campaign was quick to condemn the video posted Friday, saying it suggested physical harm to the Democratic president. Biden has portrayed his likely 2024 opponent as someone who freely evokes Nazi imagery with regard to immigrants, while also stressing in speeches that Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election led to an assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“Trump is regularly inciting political violence, and it’s time people take him seriously — just ask the Capitol Police officers who were attacked protecting our democracy on Jan. 6,” said Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded Friday night: “That picture was on the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway. Democrats and crazed lunatics have not only called for despicable violence against President Trump and his family, they are actually weaponizing the justice system against him.”
The U.S. Secret Service released a statement saying that it “does not confirm or comment on matters of protective intelligence.”
The former president posted the video on his social media site, Truth Social. His caption said the video was taken on Long Island, N.Y., on Thursday, when Trump attended the wake for a New York police officer who was killed during a traffic stop.
The posted video shows a passing truck decked out with “Trump 2024” signs and flags claiming support for police, with a picture painted on the rear of the vehicle depicting Biden with his hands and feet tied.
Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. began trading on the stock market Tuesday, with the valuation adding billions of dollars to Trump’s fortune.
Seeking a return to the White House, Trump has painted an apocalyptic picture of the country if Biden secures a second term.
“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country,” he warned at an Ohio rally earlier this month while talking about the impact on the U.S. auto industry of offshoring manufacturing.
After criticism over the “bloodbath” comments, Trump and his supporters said the words were taken out of context, that he was referring only to the auto industry. In the same speech, Trump said migrants were “not people” and “animals.”
Trump has talked about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” echoing the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler. And he has described his enemies as “vermin,” language that his opponents say reflects his authoritarian tendencies.
At one recent rally, Trump cast Biden’s handling of the border as “a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”
Last year, before his indictment in New York over hush money paid on his behalf during his 2016 campaign, Trump reposted a photo on social media of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg. Trump has also suggested that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark A. Milley, who has criticized the former president, should be executed.
In a 2018 speech, Biden discussed lewd comments that Trump had made about women and registered his disgust by suggesting a willingness to physically fight the then-president.
“If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him,” Biden said at the time, adding that any man who disrespected women was “usually the fattest, ugliest SOB in the room.”
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