Eight years after he announced his first run for the White House, it’s more than a little clear that Donald Trump’s mere existence poses a threat to society. That threat has come in many different forms, from demonizing entire groups of people to suggesting Americans shoot up bleach, to inciting a violent riot that left five people dead, to inspiring attacks on prosecutors. Most recently? It involved posting Barack Obama’s purported address online, and a man showing up in the neighborhood with guns shortly thereafter.
Per CNN:
A man arrested last week with weapons in former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, neighborhood began live-streaming in the area shortly after resharing a social media post from Donald Trump in which the former president posted what he claimed was Obama’s address, according to federal prosecutors. The prosecutors included the details in a detention memo filed Wednesday, urging federal magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui to keep the defendant, Taylor Taranto, detained pending his trial for charges related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack. Taranto has not yet been charged in connection with last week’s incident.
According to prosecutors, after sharing the Trump post, Taranto wrote on Telegram: “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” (John Podesta is the former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.) Prosecutors also say Taranto told YouTube followers, during a live stream, that he was trying to get a “good angle on a shot.” Taranto’s van reportedly had 400 rounds of ammunition when he was arrested last week. Judge Faruqui said during a hearing on Wednesday that he did not believe Taranto poses a flight risk—which federal law stipulates he must be in order to be detained pending his trial over January 6—though the judge did say that he is concerned Taranto may be a danger to the community. (Were the 400 rounds outside a former president’s home the tip-off?)
A federal defender representing Taranto did not immediately respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment, nor did a spokesman for Trump. (According to The Washington Post, “Trump’s Truth Social post featuring the address remained live on Thursday morning.”) Per the Associated Press, “the FBI had been monitoring Taranto’s online activities because of his involvement in the [January 6] riot, and began searching for him last Wednesday after he asserted on his YouTube livestream that he was in Gaithersburg, Maryland on a ‘one-way mission’ and intended to blow up the National Institute of Standards and Technology.” The next day, according to the DOJ memo, Taranto continued to livestream from Obama’s DC neighborhood and declared he was looking for “entrance points.”
Meanwhile, on the same day prosecutors asked a judge to detain the guy, Donald Trump was demanding protests on his behalf, writing on Truth Social: “MASSIVE PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT IS CURRENTLY TAKING PLACE IN AMERICA. THE WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN…OUR COUNTRY IS BEING DESTROYED BOTH INSIDE & OUT. DO THE PEOPLE OF THIS ONCE GREAT NATION EVEN HAVE A CHOICE BUT TO PROTEST THE POTENTIAL DOOM OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA??? 2024!!!”
Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman linked Trump’s “reckless” social media posts to Taranto being arrested near the Obamas’ home, telling Anderson Cooper, of the ex-president: “He has been much more reckless in terms of what he is willing to repost or re-truth or whatever he calls it on his site…it appears as if the timing is related to this gentleman’s showing up at former President Obama’s home. It is hard to ignore the fact that, you know, a lot of people who are adherents of QAnon or who, you know, listen to Trump’s verbal cues on other issues have looked at his social media feed over time and taken inspiration from it.”
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