“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, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, referring to a pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman 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 weaponizing the justice system against him.”
The video was still on Mr. Trump’s Truth Social page as of late Friday evening.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly cited Democratic statements from years past to defend Mr. Trump’s rhetoric. Mr. Cheung on Friday pointed to a statement by Mr. Biden in 2018 in which he said, referring to Mr. Trump, “If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” Mr. Biden was responding to comments that Mr. Trump had made about women on a tape linked to the show “Access Hollywood.”
Mr. Trump has previously posted doctored photos and videos depicting him physically attacking political opponents, focusing particularly on Mr. Biden in the last year. The former president has, for example, repeatedly shared videos depicting him hitting Mr. Biden with golf balls. Mr. Trump also posted a photo last year of him holding a baseball bat next to Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, who is prosecuting Mr. Trump in connection to a hush money payment made to a porn star during the 2016 campaign.
Mr. 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.”
Kaynak: briturkish.com
