logo
"WE BROKE DONALD TRUMP": The Presidents Latest Odd Social Media Post Has People Genuinely Confused

"WE BROKE DONALD TRUMP": The Presidents Latest Odd Social Media Post Has People Genuinely Confused

Yahooa day ago
President Donald Trump posted a mysterious message on his Truth Social account on Sunday that left people puzzled, at least for a little while.
In the midst of a posting spree in which he attacked the media, blamed former President Joe Biden for Russia's war on Ukraine, and defended himself after last week's seemingly unproductive meeting with Vladimir Putin, the president posted a message with just four letters: 'Bela.'
Many observers wondered if this was the 2025 version of 'covfefe,' a message he posted on X ― then called Twitter ― that quickly became a meme in 2017.
Related:
'Despite the constant negative press covfefe,' he wrote at the time in a post that was never explained and eventually deleted.
The 'Bela' message came one day after the anniversary of the Aug. 16, 1956, death of screen icon Bela Lugosi, best known for his portrayal of Dracula in the 1931 film of the same name.
As a result, a number of people responded with images of Lugosi as Dracula.
But Trump was not paying tribute to Lugosi, nor trying to create another 'covfefe' moment, but instead probably referring to the country of Belarus in a message likely posted accidentally before it was completed.
While the president never deleted the 'Bela' post, he did add a follow-up about 30 minutes later, amplifying a message from a fan about the release of 16 prisoners in Belarus and discussions taking place over the release of 1,300 more.
Related:
Then, he reposted a flurry of memes about himself.
But it was the initial 'Bela' message that had everyone talking on social media:
@BadFoxGraphics/@atrupar/X/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@GovPressOffice/X/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@adgirlMM/X/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
Related:
@mmpadellan/X/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@JonSavoyiSwear/X/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@Melmis/X/Universal Pictures/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@WUTangKids/X/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@JaredEMoskowitz/X/@realDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
Related:
@ifudontlike2bad/X/@RealDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@MattRichWarren/X/Summit Entertainment/@RealDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@KennedyPivnick/X/@RealDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
@JimCramptonWPG/@WUTangKids/X/@RealDonaldTrump/TruthSocial / Via x.com
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Also in In the News:
Also in In the News:
Also in In the News: Solve the daily Crossword
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Want your company's merger approved? Pay a MAGA influencer.
Want your company's merger approved? Pay a MAGA influencer.

Vox

time25 minutes ago

  • Vox

Want your company's merger approved? Pay a MAGA influencer.

is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He's worked at Vox since the site's launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker's Washington, DC, bureau. Attorney General Pam Bondi delivers remarks as President Donald Trump looks on during a press conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House August 11, 2025, in Washington, DC.A former Trump Justice Department appointee blasted some of his ex-colleagues in a speech Monday, saying they 'perverted justice and acted inconsistent with the rule of law' — and he named names. Roger Alford was a top appointee in the DOJ's antitrust division in both President Donald Trump's first and second terms. He and his boss, DOJ antitrust division chief Gail Slater, are associated with a faction on the right that wants tougher antitrust enforcement. They take a more skeptical view of mergers in sectors where only a few major companies are competing. But Alford was fired last month. And now, he's gone public about what happened, outlining what he said amounted to a 'pay-to-play' scandal, where companies paid well-connected outside MAGA influencers to try to get mergers approved, and certain top DOJ officials played ball. 'For 30 pieces of silver, MAGA-in-Name-Only lobbyists are influencing their allies within the DOJ and risking President Trump's populist conservative agenda,' Alford said. 'Their goal is to line their own pockets by working for any corporation that will pay top dollar to settle antitrust cases on the cheap.' 'Perverted justice and acted inconsistent with the rule of law' Though Alford didn't have anything negative to say about Trump or Attorney General Pam Bondi, he pointed the finger at two officials in particular: Bondi's chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, and Associate Attorney General nominee Stan Woodward. Mizelle 'makes key decisions depending on whether the request or information comes from a MAGA friend,' Alford said. He continued: 'Aware of this injustice, companies are hiring lawyers and influence peddlers to bolster their MAGA credentials and pervert traditional law enforcement.' The background to this is that back in January, shortly after Trump was sworn in, the DOJ's antitrust team sued to block IT company Hewlett Packard Enterprise from buying a rival, Juniper Networks. But in June, DOJ suddenly backed off, agreeing to a settlement that let the deal proceed with minor concessions. This, Alford clearly believes, was because Hewlett Packard hired two outside MAGA figures to grease the wheels for them: Mike Davis (a conservative legal activist) and Arthur Schwartz (a longtime ally of Donald Trump Jr.). 'Mike Davis and Arthur Schwartz have made a Faustian bargain of trading on relationships with powerful people to reportedly earn million-dollar success fees by helping corporations undermine Trump's antitrust agenda, hurt working class Americans, break the rules, and then try to cover it up,' Alford said in his speech. Alford didn't go into all the details about what happened, but Semafor has reported that Mizelle overruled Slater and Alford to push through the Hewlett Packard settlement — and Alford was fired soon afterward. (The drama spilled out into public, and even Laura Loomer got involved, as the antimonopoly advocate Matt Stoller has chronicled.) Urging a judge reviewing the merger to dig into the matter more, Alford's speech continued: 'It is my opinion that in the HPE/Juniper merger scandal, Chad Mizelle, and Stanley Woodward perverted justice and acted inconsistent with the rule of law. I am not given to hyperbole, and I do not say that lightly.' A DOJ spokesperson pushed back in a statement: 'Roger Alford is the James Comey of antitrust — pursuing blind self-promotion and ego, while ignoring reality. He was fired from the Department, and all should treat his comments for what they are — the delusional musings of a disgruntled ex.' What this is really all about Over the past decade, a new antitrust movement skeptical of Big Tech and big corporations generally has gained some traction on both the left and right. Biden's FTC chair, Lina Khan, became the face of this movement for Democrats, and certain up-and-coming Republicans seeking a populist brand, such as JD Vance, professed admiration for her. Most Republicans, though, loathed Khan, sympathizing with complaints from business leaders that she was overly scrutinizing mergers, and took the GOP's traditional pro-corporate line. When Trump won his second term, though, he nominated a Vance staffer, Gail Slater, as his DOJ antitrust chief. Antitrust reformers like Stoller liked Slater and took her appointment as an encouraging sign that 'Trump wants to take on big tech.' In practice, though, Trump's administration has been most defined by its weaponization of government for shakedown tactics. Trump likes deals, and he likes getting companies (or universities) to cough up money. He likes it when people ask him for favors, and he likes asking for things from them in return. He was never truly committed to an ideological agenda of tough antitrust enforcement. And he's fine with Big Tech, so long as Big Tech gives him what he wants. Slater and Alford apparently didn't get the memo and thought they'd have a free hand to enforce the law as they felt appropriate. But this earned them enemies inside and outside the administration, CBS News reported last month. There were deals to be had — and money to be made. In his speech, Alford referred to 'people inside and outside government' who 'consider law enforcement not as binding rules but an opportunity to leverage power and extract concessions.' But though Alford put the blame on those two DOJ officials, his description seems to fit Trump's approach to governance quite well. We don't know whether Trump himself got involved in the Hewlett Packard matter. But, as the saying goes, the Cossacks work for the Czar.

Swalwell: Newsom mimicking Trump social media style ‘a teaching moment'
Swalwell: Newsom mimicking Trump social media style ‘a teaching moment'

The Hill

time27 minutes ago

  • The Hill

Swalwell: Newsom mimicking Trump social media style ‘a teaching moment'

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D) recent mimicry of President Trump's social media style offers Americans a reflection on their president. 'It's a teaching moment. He's mirroring and reflecting what Donald Trump is doing, so to ask the country, 'Is this who you want as your leader, somebody who debases us and reduces the dialogue?' And yes, I mean, it's silly, it's cheeky, but it also is going on offense,' Swalwell said in an interview on 'CNN News Central.' On the page for Newsom's press office on X, multiple posts mirror the way Trump posts on his Truth Social account. The Golden State governor recently began writing his social media posts in all capital letters, just like Trump often does. 'TRUMP JUST FLED THE PODIUM WITH PUTIN — NO QUESTIONS, NOTHING! TOTAL LOW ENERGY. THE MAN LOOKED LIKE HE'D JUST EATEN 3 BUCKETS OF KFC WITH VLAD. IS HE AFRAID THE PRESS WILL ASK ABOUT ME??? (AMERICA'S FAVORITE GOVERNOR) AND THE FACT I 'STOLE THE CAMERAS' THIS WEEK WITH 'THE MAPS'?' Newsom's press office posted last Friday, the day Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Alaska. Newsom's social media pivot also comes amid a redistricting effort in his state to counter another redistricting effort in Texas. The California governor rallied support last week for his redistricting proposal, telling the U.S. to 'wake up' to what the president is attempting to do in office. 'Wake up, America,' Newsom said at the rally. 'This is a serious moment. Wake up to what's going on. Wake up to the fear, the anxiety.'

Trump's new warnings about mail-in voting are the most sinister yet
Trump's new warnings about mail-in voting are the most sinister yet

Yahoo

time35 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Trump's new warnings about mail-in voting are the most sinister yet

President Donald Trump has often shown how far he'll go to try to flout the will of voters. That's what makes his new renewed obsession with mail-in ballots so sinister. Trump falsely claimed in a Truth Social post Monday that voting by mail is a 'scam' that allows Democrats to cheat. He promised an executive order to also target another safe election tool — voting machines — and inaccurately claimed he had the authority to dictate how elections are run before the 2026 midterms. Incredibly, he appears to have been partly acting on the advice of Russian President Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian who destroyed Russia's post-Soviet Union democracy and who interfered in the 2016 election that Trump won. Trump's fixation on mail-in voting is not new. His suspicion was sent into overdrive after he lost the presidency in 2020 in an election that saw an expansion of mail-in ballots to help keep voters safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. The president sensed the danger to his hopes of a consecutive second term from a high turnout as early as the second quarter of 2020. He falsely claimed in interviews and on social media that foreign states could interfere in mail-in voting and that postal balloting would allow fraud. In June of that year, he predicted the 'Election disaster of our time' and a 'RIGGED ELECTION' on Twitter. At the time, his warnings were seen as an odd quirk and were not supported by many senior Republicans. They also frustrated GOP strategists who were urging their voters to use mail-in ballots during the health emergency, especially since Democratic voters were traditionally more likely to use postal voting. But in retrospect, and following the experience of Trump's refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election, his comments look more alarming: They heralded a historic attempt to overturn the result of a free and fair presidential election. And they mean his newest remarks on the topic should be taken seriously. Taken together with more recent attempts to sway future elections, they raise alarm bells about the midterms and the next presidential election. Since Trump lacks the Constitutional power to dictate election rules in the states, he may also be laying the groundwork to claim a Republican loss in the midterm elections — often a rite of passage for incumbent presidents — is illegitimate. Trump is again using his position to undermine elections Since returning to power, Trump has escalated his attempts to use executive power and the visibility of his office to tilt the midterms toward Republicans and to undermine democracy more generally. Trump ordered Texas Republicans to initiate an unprecedented midterm redistricting drive to net five new GOP seats by 2026, which could be critical given the current tiny Republican House majority. The move set off a similar move by Gov. Gavin Newsom to draw new Democratic seats in California, which may trigger a nationwide partisan redistricting wave that could further damage democracy. The president has also rewarded those who did his dirty work in attacking elections, granting hundreds of pardons and commutations to supporters who were convicted and jailed for the assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, an attempt to overturn President Joe Biden's election win the previous November. Trump's supporters have shown a similar disregard for the right of voters in each state to choose their leaders, even those who fiercely resisted federal power in previous capacities. In June, Homeland Security Secretary and former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem explained the deployment of National Guard troops and active-duty US Marines to Los Angeles amid protests against Trump's immigration policies. She said they planned to stay to 'liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership' of its elected Democratic representatives. In the event, the soldiers did nothing of the sort and mostly just guarded federal properties, but the deployments and her rhetoric were in keeping with Trump's authoritarian turn. More recently, Trump has sent military reservists and federal agents into the streets of Washington, DC, as part of an anti-crime crackdown. He's now importing National Guard members from Republican states in a show of force over a city that has repeatedly and overwhelmingly voted to reject him in national elections. There are concerns this could be a template he will later apply to Democratic cities in the states. With all this in mind, the possibility of an attempt by Trump to block or delegitimize the rights of states — including those that return mostly Democratic delegations — to run their own elections must be taken seriously. Putin's advice on mail-in voting Trump vented about mail-in voting during an Oval Office appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. 'Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots,' the president said, firing off a torrent of falsehoods about voter fraud. His latest tirade against mail-in voting may have been sown by Putin, an enemy of the United States, during their summit meeting in Alaska last week. 'You know, Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things. He said, 'Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.' He said, 'It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections,' Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News immediately after the summit. Trump said Putin told him that he won the 2020 by 'so much' and that there would have been no war in Ukraine had Trump held office in 2022. 'And he said, 'And you lost it because of mail-in voting.' … Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can't have an honest election with mail-in voting.' It took only two days for Trump to launch an early-morning online tirade against mail-in voting and to initiate a new attempt to halt it in the United States. Still, Trump's capacity to do more than try to discredit mail-in voting is questionable. There is no official role for presidents in administering federal elections — a point driven home in several of the criminal indictments he faced for his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election. The Constitution states that 'the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.' It does allow Congress to at any time alter regulations on the times and manner of elections. This is one potential route for Republicans to change state election laws. But since they lack 60 votes in the Senate, they'd have to outlaw the filibuster to do so, an unlikely scenario since this could open the way to untamed Democratic power the next time their rivals control the chamber. Still, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt signaled Tuesday that Trump intended to go beyond an executive order. 'I'm sure there will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill. And also our friends in state legislatures across the country, to ensure that we're protecting the integrity of the vote for the American people,' Leavitt said. 'I think Republicans generally, and the president generally, wants to make it easier for Americans to vote and harder for people to cheat in our elections,' she said — even though mail-in voting is one of the easiest ways to cast a ballot. 'And it's quite mind-boggling that the Democrat Party could stand in opposition to common sense.' Multiple studies by academic institutions, think tanks and vote protection organizations have shown that mail-in voting is secure. CNN's Daniel Dale produced a comprehensive new fact check debunking the president's claims that Democrats use mail-in voting to cheat and that the states 'must do' what the federal government and president tell them to do. The latter claim, incidentally, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the character of a federal republic. Dale notes that in general in US elections, 'there has generally been a tiny quantity of ballot fraud representing a minuscule percentage of votes cast.' Any attempt by Trump to change voting methods by executive fiat would immediately trigger court challenges. And it's not clear that Republican-led state legislatures would all fall into line, since Republicans have been catching up to Democrats in the share of early voting in person and by mail. Democrats are already signaling they will resist the president's latest salvo against mail-in voting and as a rallying call. Arizona's Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, pointed out on X Tuesday that more than 80% of the state's voters cast mail-in ballots and implied that previous warnings about Republican attempts to take over elections were coming true. 'I've been warning about this for years. The canary is dead,' he wrote. And Katie Porter, a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in California, is already fundraising off Trump's remarks. 'Donald Trump is trying to steal the 2026 midterm election in plain sight,' she wrote in a mailing Tuesday. That may be getting ahead of where things currently are. But the warning signs are there, not least following Trump's joke during his meeting with Zelensky on Monday when his visitor said elections are suspended in Ukraine for the duration of the war — as the law stipulates. 'You say during the war, you can't have elections? So, let me just say, three-and-a-half years from now — so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that's good,' Trump said. Coming from any other president, his quip might have been funnier.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store