Amid multiple national crises, President Donald Trump spent Thursday morning
posting—not for the first time—about how his predecessor Barack Obama should be
arrested, and how Georgia election workers should be prosecuted, in both cases
citing unsubstantiated claims.
Trump’s fixations on going after Obama and Georgia aren’t new, but they now come
at a moment of intense backlash across the country over his administration’s
violent campaign targeting both immigrants and citizens in Minneapolis and
nationwide.
Trump shared a screenshot of a “breaking” social media post that accused the
former president of attempting a “coup” and working with “CIA agents to
manufacture false intelligence” and “erode Americans’ confidence in our
democracy and President Trump’s LANDSLIDE VICTORY” in 2016. In that election,
Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by a margin of nearly three
million.
In another post sharing a screenshot, Trump switched to talking about 2020:
“TRUMP WON BIG. Crooked Election!” he wrote over a post about the Georgia
election results. During his second run for the presidency as a Republican,
Trump lost the nation and the state of Georgia. In the more than five years
since, Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that he won the state—and attempted
to interfere with election results, as when, in 2021, Trump pressured Georgia’s
RepublicanSecretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a phone call to “find 11,780
votes.”
Related
TRUMP CALLED THE GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE AND DEMANDED THAT HE FIND MORE
NONEXISTENT VOTES
The latest escalation took place Wednesday, when the Federal Bureau of
Investigation executed a warrant in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize records
from the 2020 presidential vote in a move that legal experts called a historic
attack on democratic norms.
That search happened not far from Fulton County Jail, where Trump was booked and
had his mugshot taken in 2023 after being indicted by the county’s District
Attorney Fani Willis on charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 vote in
Georgia.