In the early-morning hours of July 20, a brief, ominous video was promoted on former U.S. President Donald Trump's Truth Social account with a caption written by a user who had originally posted the clip: "We aren't afraid of them."
The video showed no signs of being created by Trump or any campaign officials, but rather was promoted with a "ReTruth," an action that's similar to a retweet on Twitter.
In the nine-second clip, a black-and-white picture of Trump's eyes appears onscreen with the former president saying the words, "If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before."
According to Politico, this out-of-context sound bite originally came from remarks Trump had made about Iran during an October 2020 interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.
The video also featured the menacing horn sound effect emitted by the deadly alien tripods from the 2005 Steven Spielberg film, "War of the Worlds." In the movie, after the first time the horn sound occurs, one of the tripods begins killing person after person, turning them to a gray dust with laser-like weapons.
The "ReTruth" in Trump's feed showed that the video had been posted on July 18 by the person behind the @AmericanAF account.
On Twitter, a user named @TAftermath2020 took credit for creating the video under a mention from Sarasota lawyer Ron Filipkowski:
Love that the video I made was the Retruth! FAFOpic.twitter.com/BK4uDFPnqO
— MAGS (@TAftermath2020) July 20, 2023
We contacted the Trump campaign by email to ask if there was any specific reason why the video was promoted by the former president, or if it was simply shared out of interest. We also reached out to the person who appeared to have created the video to ask about its meaning. This article will be updated if we receive further details.
During the same week that Trump's account showed the "ReTruth" of the video, the former president had also been dealing with several legal challenges, as Raw Story reported.
On July 19, a federal judge upheld a $5 million jury verdict against Trump in the rape trial involving writer E. Jean Carroll, as The Associated Press (AP) reported.
Also on July 19, AP published that a different federal judge had rejected Trump's bid to move his hush-money criminal case from New York state court to federal court.
Additionally, Trump had said he was sent a target letter by special counsel Jack Smith on July 16, in regard to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The letter may have indicated that new federal charges were on the horizon for the former president.