“Mess With Me and You’ll Regret It”: Trump’s Ominous Threat Fuels Tensions in Contentious 2024 Campaign

William FurneyOct 23, 2023

Minute Read

In a possible sign that a newly re-elected President Trump might do as he pleases during a second term in the White House, the embattled property tycoon has shared a chilling social media post.

Warning Shot

Image Credit: mundissima / Shutterstock.

Trump resposted a video on his Truth Social platform that had been doing the rounds online. The clip shows an image of Trump with his voice saying: “If you f*** around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are going to do things to you that have never been done before.”

Original Iran Remark

Editorial credit: Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.

Trump made the threat while speaking at a rally in 2020 about Iran, while seeking re-election. He went on to controversially lose the election to Joe Biden, triggering deadly violence when he urged his supporters to protest at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, in January 2021.

Repurposed Video for 2024 Campaign

But now it appears the machinery behind Trump’s hopes of being elected president in 2024 has re-used the Iran threat as a more general statement against perceived enemies. Trump’s campaign has removed any mention of Iran from the clip and added a Trump 2020 logo to the video.

Foes at Home Too

Not all Trump’s foes are foreign regimes like Iran, however. At home, the former president is facing a litany of legal cases that could see him fined large sums of money, take away his property empire and potentially even see him jailed.

Gag Orders

Trump’s eagerness to speak his mind and lash out at anyone he doesn’t like by using Truth Social and also X, formerly called Twitter, has seen him slapped with two gag orders in recent weeks. It came after he tore into judges, prosecutors, lawyers and court staff.

A judge in a civil trial in New York concerning allegations of fraud at the Trump Organization imposed a gag order on the defendant after the president made denigrating comments online about his senior clerk. The judge fined Trump $5,000 last week for failing to remove the social media post — a violation of his gag order.

2020 Election Case

The ex-president has also been placed under gag order in a federal case alleging he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power from taking place. The judge overseeing that case, however, froze the order temporarily last week, following arguments from Trump’s legal team.

Other Legal Headaches

Among the other trials that Trump is facing is another federal case in which prosecutors say he illegally removed sensitive government documents from the White House and stored them at his resort home in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. They also say Trump discussed the files’ contents — said to contain information about the US nuclear stockpile and other classified details — with other people, potentially jeopardizing national security.

Trump’s 2020 Chances

In total, Trump has been indicted four times and charged with 91 counts of wrongdoing. At the same time, he remains the favorite for the Republican Party nomination in primaries next January. Trump is far ahead of his GOP rivals, polling at close to 60 percent while the rest of the field — including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once the main contender to Trump — is languishing at around 10 percent voter support and lower.

Social Media Aghast

People on social media were astonished by Trump’s latest threat to enemies, wondering how he could make such statements and seemingly get away with it.

One wrote on X: “How is he allowed to do this with no reprimand, punishment, nothing???”

‘Lock Him Up’

Another person on X, Mike Sington, echoed Trump’s call during his first presidential run against Hillary Clinton, “Lock her up.”

“Trump posts clip threatening the country. This lunatic must be locked up now,” said Sington.

‘Gag Him’

Still another X user, Dean Blundell, said an additional gag order was needed for the former president.

“Donald Trump is now threatening to hurt anyone who stands in his way. Someone needs a gag order,” he said.

Trump Team ‘Not Afraid’

An account belonging to @AmericanAF that declares itself the “Official MAGA Headquarters” — referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan — posted the Trump threat video and said: “We aren’t afraid of them.”