Topline
Former President Donald Trump is facing backlash after he shared a video depicting an image of President Joe Biden tied up in the back of a pickup truck—but it’s not the first time he’s been in hot water over violent imagery involving his political opponents.
Key Facts
Trump shared the video on Truth Social on Friday, depicting a pickup truck driving on the highway with a “Trump 2024” sticker and pro-police flags, and a bumper sticker depicting the Biden image on the back of the truck.
Last year, Trump faced criticism for sharing an article with an accompanying photo of him holding a baseball bat next to a photo of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor handling the criminal hush money case against him, before posting on Truth Social that “death and destruction” could result from Bragg bringing forward criminal charges.
He later denied that he intended to incite violence and said he didn’t know the picture would be shared along with the article.
In 2017, Trump shared a GIF taken from an appearance he made in a professional wrestling match, depicting him beating up a man in a suit with the CNN logo superimposed on the man’s face along with the hashtag “FraudNewsCNN.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press slammed the video as a “threat of physical violence against journalists” and CNN called it “juvenile,” while Trump doubled down on his criticisms of the network and accused it of taking the GIF “too seriously.”
Tangent
Trump faced scrutiny in 2019 after a New York Times report claimed that a violent parody video depicting Trump’s face superimposed on a figure stabbing and killing other figures with digitally imposed images of well-known Trump opponents was played in front of Trump supporters at one of Trump’s hotels. Then-President Trump, however, was not in attendance at the event, did not share the video and claimed to have not seen it before, and his administration condemned the video.
Chief Critic
Michael Tyler, a Biden campaign spokesman, called the image Trump shared “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’” in a statement to multiple outlets.
Contra
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said “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” in a statement to multiple outlets after the video was shared, referencing the ongoing criminal cases against Trump. There have been instances of Trump critics posting violent imagery involving Trump—most notably, comedian Kathy Griffin faced criticism after sharing a photo of her holding a model of a bloodied, severed Trump head in 2017. She was later fired as a host of CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast.
Key Background
Threats of political violence have been more common in the United States in recent years—and not just at the federal level. More than 40% of state lawmakers say they’ve experienced threats in the past three years according to a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.
