Biden and Trump Campaigns Clash on Social Media

The 2024 presidential campaigns of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Monday locked horns over social media.

The campaigns of the rivals, who are expected to face each other in a 2020 rematch in November, traded multiple posts on X, formerly Twitter, after the Biden campaign shared a clip of Trump suggesting that he would be “allowed” to take money from a foreign government to pay a bond required for an appeal of his New York civil fraud judgment.

New York’s appellate court on Monday reduced the bond amount from over $464 million to $175 million, while giving Trump an additional 10 days to pay. Shortly after the ruling, the former president hailed the decision as a major victory during a press conference, before a reporter raised the subject of whether he could receive funds from overseas to pay the bond.

“Will you accept money from a foreign government to pay the bond or your fines?” the reporter asked Trump.

“No, I don’t do that,” Trump responded. “I think you’d be allowed to, possibly. I don’t know. I mean if you go borrow from a big bank, many of the banks are outside of this—as you know, the biggest banks frankly are outside of our country—so, you could do that. But I don’t need to borrow money, I have a lot of money.”

The Biden campaign’s Biden-Harris HQ X account shared a short video of the exchange, alongside a comment claiming that “Trump insists he’s ‘allowed’ to take foreign money to pay his bond.”

The Trump campaign’s Trump War Room account responded by claiming that the Biden campaign was “wrong” about Trump saying that he could use foreign funding for the bond, while repeating a popular but unsubstantiated Republican theory that claims Biden received funds from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“Wrong, you dip****,” the Trump campaign’s Trump War Room account responded. “He said he’ll pay with cash, securities, or bonds. Unlike Crooked Joe who is bought and paid for by the CCP.”

The Biden campaign responded by sharing an image of the following 2014 Twitter post from @dril, whose posts have frequently been featured as social media memes: “and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that I got mad.”

Trump’s campaign replied once more by sharing without comment a short video featuring clips of Biden tripping or falling on multiple occasions.

Newsweek reached out for comment to the Biden and Trump campaigns via email on Monday night.

While social media has played a key role throughout Trump’s political career, the Biden campaign has seemingly adopted a more aggressive social media strategy against the ex-president as November’s election approaches, with Trump attempting to fend off his continuing legal troubles.

Trump was repeatedly mocked by the Biden campaign for his behavior during the press conference on Monday, which included him saying, “you can’t have an election in the middle of a political season.” The Biden campaign shared a statement soon after that, claiming Trump was too “weak” and “feeble” to be president.

“Donald Trump is weak and desperate—both as a man and a candidate for President,” the Biden campaign statement reads. “He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn’t have … America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.”

Trump campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung reacted to the statement minutes later, writing on X that “the Biden campaign has to send out one of their little flunkeys to speak for Crooked Joe because he’s either still in bed or in the middle of getting B12 shots.”