Former president Donald Trump has shared a post on his social media platform Truth that appeared to propose or predict a civil war in the US, triggering an uproar.
The “truth” shared by the former president on Sunday was from an anonymous account with the name Maga king Thanos.
The post contained a screengrab of a 19 March tweet from El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, where he is asking how “the most powerful country in the world is falling so fast,” responding to a news update about inflation.
The tweet was shared as a screenshot on the Truth social site by former Fox Nation host Lara Logan. The anonymous Maga-supporting user had then “retruthed” the post writing “Civil war”, which was then shared by Mr Trump.
The exchange was highlighted by attorney George Conway, one of Mr Trump’s most prominent conservative critics.
Mr Conway told CNN in an interview on Sunday night that Democrats aren’t taking the former president’s threat to American democracy seriously enough because “they’re terrified of him”.
“But they’re also terrified of a Republican base that’s become increasingly radicalised. That actually does believe that people who politically disagree with them are a threat to the nation and therefore violence could be necessary to fight them off, and that’s what we saw in this social media post,” he said.
The post has been condemned by others as well, including members of Mr Trump’s own party.
Republican representative Adam Kinzinger, one of Mr Trump’s few Republican detractors in Congress, wrote: “Any of my fellow Republicans wanna speak out now? Or are we just wanting to get through ‘just one more election’ first…?”
Democrat representative Eric Swalwell wrote: “Donald Trump is calling for Civil War. Of course, like Vietnam and the walk to the Insurrection, he won’t be man enough to fight it.”
Mr Bukele, the president of El Salvador, is known for being very active on Twitter and has a strained relationship with the Biden administration.
