Donald Trump shared a video featuring an image of a hog-tied President Joe Biden on Friday, ratcheting up the violent rhetoric and imagery that has become a ubiquitous feature of his 2024 re-election bid.
The 20-second video, which Trump posted to Truth Social, shows two pickup trucks festooned with pro-Trump and pro-police iconography barreling down a highway. One features a large decal of Biden with his hands and feet bound in a manner suggestive of a kidnapping.
Trump captioned the post “LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK,” likely a reference to memorial services for a New York Police Department officer who was killed last week during a traffic stop. Trump attended a Thursday wake for the officer, at which he called police the “greatest people we have” and vowed to “get back to law and order.”
Photos of trucks bearing this image of Biden have recently appeared across social media sites, The New York Times reported.
“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,’” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said Friday, referring to comments Trump made during a 2020 presidential debate. “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.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung downplayed the post, saying in a statement Friday night that the image of Biden “was on the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway,” while “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.”
Trump has a sordid history of sharing violent videos and imagery attacking political opponents, including posting doctored videos of him hitting both Biden and Hillary Clinton with golf balls. In March, he posted an article featuring an image of himself holding a baseball bat next to New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is prosecuting Trump for his “hush money” payment to Stormy Daniels.
Trump’s re-election bid has been riddled with violent rhetoric from the very beginning: at his first rally in Waco, Texas—a city with important symbolic significance for the far right—Trump promised his supporters “retribution” and described the election as a “final battle.”