WaPo (“Donald Trump shares image of Joe Biden with hands and feet tied“):
Former president Donald Trump disseminated on social media on Friday an image of President Biden with his hands and feet tied, the latest example of the Republican candidate’s use of increasingly violent rhetoric and imagery this campaign season.
The image can be seen about halfway through a 20-second video that Trump posted on his Truth Social site. The post says it was recorded Thursday on Long Island, where Trump traveled this week to attend a wake for a recently killed police officer.
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 bound and lying horizontally.
WaPo didn’t include the video or the photo. MTN (MeidasTouch Network)’s J.D. Wolf (“Trump Posts Image of Joe Biden Kidnapped And Bound With Rope“) posts a screencap of the video and this larger image:
The larger video is at this link. It has been “ReTruth’d” 3.64k times and received 14.4k likes since being posted at 1:38 PM yesterday.
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.
“This image from Donald Trump is the type of crap you post when you’re calling for a bloodbath or when you tell the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by,’” said Michael Tyler, communication director for Biden’s campaign, referring to the right-wing group involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the 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 January 6.”
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign, sent a lengthy statement distancing the campaign from the image, and accusing Democrats of using violent rhetoric against Trump.
“That picture was on the back of a pick up truck that was traveling down the highway,” Cheung said in the statement. “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 message remained live on Trump’s feed late Friday night.
It’s entirely possible that Trump didn’t even notice the decal on the truck, festooned as it was with flags and Trump logos. Indeed, if I hadn’t been looking for it, I might not have. I suspect that he simply saw it as more of his adoring fans showing their loyalty.
In a different political climate, I would find the decal—available in at least one other variant judging from the links in the WaPo report—clever, if not amusing. On first glance, it really looks like the driver has Biden wrapped up in the truck, with the bedliner and wheel wells showing.
We are, alas, in a climate where violent rhetoric is common and the former President incited a riot at the nation’s capitol in an attempt to intimidate Members of Congress from certifying the election results. That Trump inspires these yahoos and eggs them on is shameful.
There’s a cottage industry of these, most of which are available on Amazon for $49.99 or $59.99, depending on the size of the truck.
Why you’d want to put this on your $70,000 pickup truck, I’ll never understand.
