The campaign representative of Former US President Donald Trump denied that he purchased a Glock handgun during a campaign event in South Carolina on Monday.
Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, shared a since-deleted video on social media in which Trump was shown the weapon and said, “I want to buy one.”
The statement that Trump bought the semi-automatic gun was made in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Simba Daily was later informed by sources from Trump’s media that he did not actually complete the purchase.
Inquiries concerning his post from CNBC were unanswered by Cheung.
Donald Trump – the Republican former US President, and leading candidate,has been charged in four different criminal cases this year.
Indictees are prohibited from purchasing firearms by federal law.
However, in September 2022, a federal judge in Texas declared that statute to be unconstitutional. In that conclusion, the court noted a Supreme Court decision that had earlier that year overturned a New York gun ban, bringing into question a number of gun control legislation.
In all, 91 felonies are charged against Trump in these four cases. He has entered a not-guilty plea to each accusation.
The brief video was recorded by Cheung while on an impromptu campaign visit at Summerville, South Carolina’s Palmetto State Armory.
In it, Trump ogles the firearm that the individual sitting next to him is holding.
“Wow,” Trump says in the video as he points to the gun.
“I’ve got to buy one. I want to buy one,” he says.
After the individual in possession of the pistol responds briefly, Trump responds once more, “No, I want to buy one.”
Every year, hundreds of Americans lose their lives as a result of gun-related tragedies. According to Sources in the US, gun-related injuries are the leading cause of death for kids and teenagers.
The most recent year for which such data is available from the CDC is 2021, which had a total of 48,830 gun deaths. It was the most gun fatalities the United States has ever seen.
Donald Trump Jr.’s account on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, was compromised, according to a spokesman for the former president on Wednesday. The account started sharing a number of strange and unpredictable remarks.
“Don’s account has been hacked,” Andrew Surabian posted on X, adding that a post claiming the former president had died was “obviously not true.”
The hijacked account falsely declared both that Donald Trump Sr. had passed away and that Trump Jr. would be running for president. The post was shared more than 1,000 times on X in a matter of minutes, and it received hundreds of thousands of views.
A pinned post on the account’s profile used a racial term to disparage President Joe Biden, while another post appeared to threaten the nation of North Korea.
The postings had been taken down about 30 minutes after they first appeared. CNN’s request for comment from X was not met.
In light of the event, and as the platform gears up for the 2024 elections, new concerns have been raised regarding X’s responsibility for protecting user accounts, particularly those held by prominent political personalities. Following massive layoffs last year that, according to owner Elon Musk, ultimately resulted in the elimination of more than 80% of the company’s manpower, X announced in August that it is expanding its safety and election teams.
Also unknown are if Trump Jr.’s private direct communications were possibly compromised by the breach and whether two-factor authentication was possibly set on his account.
The Federal Trade Commission is still looking into X’s ability to adequately protect user privacy and whether or not it may have gone against legally-binding promises it made to secure the platform in 2011. Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, the company’s former security chief, made a whistleblower disclosure last year that revealed pervasive and ignored security flaws, which sparked the investigation.
It has happened before when prominent accounts on the network were hijacked. For instance, hackers who pretended to be Twitter’s IT support in 2020 took control of accounts belonging to former president Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and others, including Biden and Musk themselves. Twitter said that the hackers had stolen account information at the time, possibly including private messages.