An unhinged get-out-the-vote video shared by President Donald Trump on Twitter was popularized on Reddit’s r/TheDonald subreddit.
The video presents viewers with “two choices on November 6th,” between “the GOP’s America” -- shown as a prosperous economy -- and “the left’s America” -- shown as widespread violence.
#JOBSNOTMOBS! VOTE REPUBLICAN NOW!! pic.twitter.com/wso9ZHIvyF
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018
The video does not appear to have been created by Trump’s staff, but rather was a popular post on r/The_Donald. Since being posted on October 19, the video has nearly 7,400 upvotes on Reddit. The link in the r/The_Donald post goes to a YouTube video posted on October 17 with the description “RETWEET so Trump and others will see.”
The YouTube account is associated with a Twitter account that highlighted actor and conservative troll James Woods, who shared the video on October 20. The video was also promoted in an October 19 post at Erick Erickson’s The Resurgent, which attributed the video to “a random Youtuber.”
Like the video Trump promoted, the slogan “Jobs not Mobs” -- which Trump has adopted in recent days -- also originated on social media, reportedly from a Twitter user with less than 500 followers.
According to a 2017 report published at Politico, by the end of the 2016 presidential campaign, “a team in the war room at Trump Tower was monitoring social media trends, including The_Donald subreddit—a message board that acted as a conduit between 4Chan and the mainstream Web and refers to its users as ‘centipedes’.” Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, reportedly visited the r/The_Donald subreddit on a daily basis in 2016 when he worked on Trump’s digital team.
Leading up to the midterm elections, Trump and his conservative media allies have used the baseless claim that Democrats stand ready to kill conservative voters as a major part of their messaging.