Coming off the best week he’s had in a long time, playing Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for a chump by predicting his arrest last week, dominating the news and raising legitimate questions about the weakness of the case, Donald Trump has shot himself in the foot. In the process, he has damaged the conservative cause debunking the phony "insurrection" narrative.
At least, he realized it, and deleted a Truth Social posting in which he had a picture of himself holding a baseball bat next to a picture of the corpulent DA.
(source)
My friend and colleague Andrea Widburg notes that the picture automatically appeared when Trump used a National File article containing it.
The National File chose to juxtapose the image of Trump holding a bat in 2017 with a picture of Alvin Bragg. That editorial decision makes it seem as if Trump is swinging the bat in Bragg’s direction.
What’s important to emphasize is that the photo comes from The National File and appeared automatically in Trump’s “truth” sharing the article about Bragg’s unpopularity and lack of mandate....
I am afraid that when you have to explain, you are losing. Trump owns Truth Social, and can be expected to understand how images appear. I don't know how long it took him to delete the post, but it appears that it was not immediate, when he discovered that he had inadvertently posted a quesitonable image.
He must have thought that he was trolling his opponents, hoping to goad them into hysteria so extreme that it would alienate people. And, to adopt the language featured by the MSM, “critics pounced” with some citing the infamous scene in The Untouchables movie version, written by David Mamet, in which Al Capone bloodily beats to death an associate who has displeased him with a baseball bat to the head, and others a scene of similar baseball bat mayhem from the movie The Warriors.
Equally counter-productive was his threat of “death and destruction.” Evidence that was suppressed by the Jan. 6 Committee is coming out that has been raising serious questions about the “insurrection” narrative put out by the Dems. Now, by invoking what looks like a threat of lethal mayhem, Trump has damaged the re-assessment process.
I generally look for Trump’s reasoning in taking actions that outrage his critics. Often, he is talking right past them, and often targets people that his critics disregard, at their own peril. But I don’t see this post on Truth Social as accomplishing anything for Trump, and harming himself with people that might be persuaded to support him. Worst of all, he has reinforced the “insurrection” narrative.