Donald Trump responded to the news of the grand jury passing down a superseding indictment in the past 24 hours with a flood of memes that MSNBC reporters called "vengeful" and "explicit."
Speaking to MSNBC Wednesday, Vaughn Hillyard showed a handful of posts Trump shared on Truth Social. One image showed a number of Democrats and Bill Gates behind bars and in orange prison uniforms. The caption reads: "How to actually 'fix the system.'"
"Bill Gates!" host Katy Tur questioned.
Another meme shows the House Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The text over it says, "Indict the unselect J6 committee. SEDITION. Retruth if you want to lock them up."
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A different one has a photo of special counsel Jack Smith saying, "Jackal Smith is a career criminal, a political weapon against America. He should be prosecuted for election interference and prosecutorial misconduct."
Finally, an image Hillyard showed is a photo of when former President Barack Obama welcomed Trump to the White House after winning the 2016 election. The meme text claims: "All roads lead to Obama. Retruth if you want public military tribunals."
"This is Donald Trump in the last two hours," Hillyard explained.
But Tur questioned whether it was real or possibly part of a different effort.
"It doesn't seem like these are posted by real people," she suggested. "The handles with the emojis on them and the quality of these AI images make you wonder if it's an individual somewhere posting this and creating this stuff on their own or done by a bot or some other agency that wants to influence things. Put that aside, this is the former president reposting images of his opponents—political opponents—in prison, big business leaders like Bill Gates."
Hillyard explained that none of this is new and that last month, Trump even suggested a military tribunal for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY).
"We're two months out from an election, and for anybody to suggest retribution is not on Donald Trump's mind, go to his social media account because this is where he has direct control over what he can post and repost," he suggested.
Trump's allegations include "election interference," he says is happening at the hands of Google and the grand jury indictment. He also alleges the gag order ahead of his sentencing in the Manhattan trial is also part of that ongoing conspiracy against him.
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