Trump accused of 'inciting violence' after posting image of Biden tied up in a truck

Donald Trump has been accused by Democrats of inciting violence against Joe Biden after he posted a video on social media featuring an image of the US President hog-tied in the back of a truck as if he had been kidnapped.

The former president on Friday shared a clip on his Truth Social account that contained an image of Mr Biden painted on the tailgate of a pickup truck.

The US president is depicted bound by his hands and ankles in the bed of the vehicle, which Mr Trump said was spotted in Long Island, New York, on Thursday, where Mr Trump this week attended a memorial service for a recently killed police officer.

The truck is also decorated with a “Trump 2024” sticker and flags claiming support for the police.

Mr Biden’s campaign quickly condemned the video for suggesting harm to the president.

“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, the Biden campaign’s communications director, referring to the Right-wing group involved in the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

He added: “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.”

The Trump campaign responded on Friday, saying the Democrats have encouraged violence against Mr Trump’s family.

“That picture was on the back of a pickup truck that was traveling down the highway,” spokesman Steven Cheung said.

“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.”

Mr Cheung cited a comment by Mr Biden in 2018 in which he said, “If we were in high school, I’d take him [Trump] behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”

The post was still live on Trump’s feed on Saturday morning.

It is not the first time the former president has shared posts that contain violent images featuring his opponents.

Last year, before his indictment in New York over hush money paid on his behalf during his 2016 campaign, Trump posted a photo on social media of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

In 2017, Mr Trump shared a doctored video of him hitting a golf ball at Hillary Clinton, who falls down. He shared another similar video featuring Mr Biden last October.

Throughout an increasingly hostile campaign for the White House, Mr Biden’s team has attacked Mr Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, for language that they say insights violence.

In October, Mr Trump was accused of echoing the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler with regard to immigrants, following an interview in which he claimed that undocumented migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

The former president has painted an apocalyptic picture of the country if Mr Biden secures a second term and promised “ultimate and absolute revenge” if he returns to the White House.

“If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country,” he warned at rally in Ohio earlier this month, while talking about the impact of offshoring on the US’s auto industry.

At a recent rally, Mr Trump cast Mr Biden’s handling of the border as “a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”