Combination picture of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Former President Donald Trump posted a video Friday to his social media website that features an image of President Joe Biden with his hands and feet tied together.
Trump posted the video to Truth Social early Friday afternoon with a line that said it was filmed on Long Island on Thursday, when Trump attended the wake of a slain New York City police officer in Massapequa Park, New York. The video shows two moving trucks decorated with flags and decals supporting Trump. The tailgate of the second vehicle features the image of Biden.
Macabre imagery targeting Trump’s perceived enemies frequently circulates online among right-wing provocateurs and pro-Trump groups, and in some cases has been featured at conservative conferences. Photos of trucks featuring similar images of Biden tied up have been shared across social media, and online vendors sell vehicle stickers with the image.
Trump’s promotion of the video featuring the image reflects the increasingly caustic and personal attacks that he has directed against Biden — for example, in a speech this month he said that “everything Joe Biden touches turns to” filth, though he used an expletive — and it extends a record in which the former president features violent imagery on his social media accounts.
A representative for the Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said “that picture was on the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway,” adding that “Democrats and crazed lunatics have not only called for despicable violence against President Trump and his family, they are actually weaponising the justice system against him.”
The video was still on Trump’s Truth Social page as of late Friday evening.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly cited Democratic statements from years past to defend Trump’s rhetoric. Cheung on Friday pointed to a statement by Biden in 2018 in which he said, referring to Trump, “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” Biden was responding to comments that Trump had made about women on a tape linked to the show “Access Hollywood.”
Trump has previously posted doctored photos and videos depicting him physically attacking political opponents, focusing particularly on Biden in the last year. The former president has, for example, repeatedly shared videos depicting him hitting Biden with golf balls. Trump also posted a photo last year of him holding a baseball bat next to Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, who is prosecuting Trump in connection to a hush money payment made to a porn actor during the 2016 campaign.
Trump has also used increasingly authoritarian language on the campaign trail, repeatedly saying that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and describing his political opponents in a Veterans Day speech last year as “vermin” who needed to be “rooted out.”
This month, Trump said that some migrants were “not people” and, amid a discussion of the auto industry, that the country would face a “blood bath” if he lost the election. A few days later, he attacked Jewish Democrats in a radio interview, saying that Jews who vote for Democrats hate their religion and Israel.