Post from Truth Social

A lion video, a week after "retribution will be through success"

The clip is a montage, and he added no words to it. A narrator describes a lion, "the king of the jungle," that puts up with jackals "barking at them, laughing at them" until "one day, that lion gets up and tears his * out of everybody." Cut into it are two lines from Trump's 2017 inaugural address ("For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost"; "whether we are black, or brown, or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots"). There is also an old news line, "New York State's Attorney General Letitia James saying she's prepared to seize Donald Trump's assets," and Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight" ("I can feel it coming in the air tonight") over a repeated "I know what I am." The inaugural lines are the only words in the clip that are his. The lion narration, the news anchor and the lyrics belong to other people. Versions of this lion-and-jackals edit have circulated among his supporters for years, so the likeliest explanation is that he reposted a fan edit, not that his team produced it.

What the clip does on his behalf

Posting it casts him as the lion and his opponents as jackals. The montage ties that casting to one named person: the only identifiable adversary in the clip is Letitia James, and she appears in the slot where the narration builds toward the lion's patience running out ("closer and closer and bolder and bolder"). The arc is a revenge sequence in which the hero tolerates humiliation and then strikes, and the closing line states the moral outright: "every once in a while, the lion has to show the jackals who he is."

This sits uneasily beside the video he posted on September 25, which said "Retribution will be through success." Six days later he posts a clip in which retribution is physical: the lion "tears" everybody apart. The two framings, one measured and one violent, now sit side by side in his feed. This matches the firehose pattern, where inconsistent messages each serve a different audience and neither is retracted.

Self-image and defenses

The grandiosity comes through identification with the lion ("king of the jungle," "Huge mane," "I know what I am"). Splitting divides the clip's world into one sovereign animal and a pack of scavengers, with no middle ground. The jackals' supposed behavior, "barking," "laughing," mocking from a safe distance, mirrors grievances that show up repeatedly in his recent context: SNL's September 27 Weekend Update, the boos at Medinah the same day, and record-low approval. That makes ridicule the most plausible injury behind the post. The clip doesn't answer the ridicule. It turns it into the fuel for an eventual counterattack, a defensive move that recasts mockery as a sign of the mockers' weakness and his own coming dominance. He is in the grandiose state, holding back a vulnerable layer: the lion's whole story is about enduring disrespect.

The inaugural lines work as legitimation. They slot the personal vendetta (James, the asset seizure) into a populist frame ("We are transferring power back to you, the people"), so the lion's revenge is presented as being on the public's behalf. That is rationalization carried by the edit itself.

Violent imagery and a named target

Comparing opponents to jackals is animal-based dehumanization. It is milder than "vermin," but it does the same job of turning human adversaries into scavengers. The violence in the clip is explicit, "tears his * out of everybody," and it is pointed, by editing, toward a named state official. The three elements of the stochastic pattern are close to present: a named target (James), a grievance (seizing his assets), and violent action. What keeps it short of a mobilization call is that the actor in the metaphor is the lion, meaning him, not his audience. Nobody is told to act. The clip promises his own reckoning. That distinction matters for how the post is read, but it isn't much protection for James. The New York case has been a recurring grievance, she was federally indicted in 2025 under his administration, and a sitting president's audience is primed to read "show the jackals who he is" as a signal of action by the state.

Timing and authorship

The post went up at 7:33 PM Eastern, presumably from Washington, in a day of several wordless media posts. One of the same day's few written posts blamed the "Dumocrats" for prices. The evening hour and the rapid run of media posts fit his own handling of the account more than staff scheduling. Still, a clip with no caption shows only who chose it, and no stylometric evidence is available.

What can't be read from this post

The transcript has no language of his beyond inaugural lines delivered nearly a decade ago, so it gives no cognitive information. The James asset-seizure line is a broadcaster's report from the 2024 civil fraud judgment, which an appellate court later voided as to the penalty. The clip brings it back without that update, and that omission is a choice worth noting, but the line is not his claim to fact-check.