Post from Truth Social

One form among many, posted on Election Day morning

The post went up at 7:14 a.m. Eastern (12:14 UTC; daylight time ended November 1) on Election Day itself, as one of at least six Indiana State Senate endorsements in the same run. Byrne (47th), Garten (45th), Maxwell (43rd), Davis (41st), Ellington (39th) and now Raatz (27th) all get the same parts: a résumé opener ("A Brave U.S. Army Veteran", "A Brave U.S. Marine Corps Veteran"), the same string of policy items ("Protect 'Hoosier' Values, Stop Migrant Crime, Grow our Economy, Cut Taxes, Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A."), and a closing line that is always "Complete and Total Endorsement." The paragraph attacking the opponent matches, word for word, the one used against Ross Thomas in the Davis post: "is a Radical Left Democrat who is opposed to NO TAX ON TIPS, NO TAX ON OVERTIME, and NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY and, if he and the Dumocrats ever got in, all of these things will be terminated."

That settles authorship. The text is a staff template with the district number, the biography and the opponent's name swapped in. It is signed in the third-person form "President DONALD J. TRUMP" and ends with a campaign URL (swampthevoteusa.com/indiana/). The odd parts are template parts too. "Dumocrats" and "Transgender Mutilization of your Children" have run through endorsement boilerplate for months, so they say nothing about Trump's language on this day, and "Mutilization" (for "mutilation") can't be counted as a fresh paraphasia when it is copied text. Nothing in the post drifts off topic or interrupts itself. The capitalization ("Wisdom and Courage", "Defend our Country") is the house style of these endorsements, applied evenly, and doesn't read as an emotional spike.

The redistricting ledger behind the batch

The Indiana series makes more sense alongside the state's December 2025 fight. The State Senate rejected Trump's mid-decade congressional map 31-19, a rare Republican break with him, and he answered with threats against the senators who voted no. Raatz said publicly that he would vote yes, and he voted yea at the committee stage. The Davis endorsement in this same run puts the test into words ("strongly voted WITH Republicans to pass Redistricting"). Raatz's text leaves it out, but his position on the map is a matter of record. My reading, held with medium confidence because I didn't check every endorsee's floor vote, is that this batch pays back loyalty from a vote he lost. The endorsement works as patronage given out from above, which fits the King archetype: favor goes to those who stood with him. The motive underneath is power and the upkeep of alliances, with little communion in it. Raatz is valued for being "an America First Patriot" and for what he will do ("HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN"), and nothing personal is said about him.

Splitting by template

The post sorts two people into opposite moral categories using stock parts. Raatz gets "Brave," "Wisdom and Courage," "fantastic job." Itnyre, a biology lecturer at IU East whom Raatz beat with about 71% in 2022, gets "Reckless, Radical, and Dangerous!" and is credited with wanting "massive Tax Increases, Open Borders, Men playing in Women's Sports, and Transgender Mutilization of your Children." That is splitting and devaluation in their institutional form. Because the same paragraph is attached to any Democratic opponent, the devaluation responds to party label, not to anything Itnyre has said. The fear appeal about children's "Mutilization" is the most charged phrase in the post. It aims at a policy caricature and singles out no group or person for action. Itnyre is named, but nothing in the text points readers toward him. "Defend our always under siege Second Amendment" adds the standing image of a besieged in-group, and the post casts itself as restoring order against a disorder the other party would bring.

What the tax claims leave out

The opponent paragraph ties a state legislative race to federal tax law. "No tax on tips," "no tax on overtime" and the senior provision came in the 2025 federal reconciliation law as capped deductions set to expire after 2028. A state senator has no vote on any of them, so the promise that they "will be terminated" if Itnyre wins attaches a federal outcome to an office that can't produce it. "No tax on Social Security" overstates what the law does: it is a temporary deduction for seniors, not an exemption, and Indiana already doesn't tax Social Security benefits, which leaves a Hoosier voter nothing on that front for a state senator to defend. The issue-and-threat attack works for a national message and has no hold on this race.

Baseline

Measured against the run of templated endorsements over the past months, this post doesn't deviate. The one feature tied to the date is volume: a burst of down-ballot endorsements on Election Day morning, after canceled in-person rallies and a switch to tele-rallies, fits a final staff-run push to get out the vote, not a personal reaction to anything.

Fact Verification

Taxes: Nothing in his record calls for tax increases, let alone massive ones. His platform calls for reviewing SEA 1 (the 2025 property tax law) to build 'a fairer, more transparent, and more effective tax system'. It promises to 'protect homeowners from surprise tax swings' and 'protect farmland from unfair tax burdens', and it proposes credits for working families with children. In the Western Wayne News Q&A he backed 'Smart Tax policies' that 'balance tax cuts with tax readjustments' and said 'We cannot spend money we do not have.' He would work with county auditors and treasurers to decide which taxes are needed and which services could be cut. The Statehouse File quotes him saying the debate should be about how to cut property taxes 'without losing the services they fund', not whether to cut them. His main complaint is that the state's cuts went to corporations while local governments lost revenue. Calling for a rebalanced tax mix is not a call for 'massive Tax Increases', and his own words point the other way.

Open borders, women's sports, transgender care for minors: I found no statement by Itnyre on any of these. His campaign site, both Western Wayne News Q&As and the forum coverage cover taxes, public schools, farms, rural broadband, infrastructure, child care, local control, redistricting and Republican supermajority politics. Immigration and gender issues never come up. Searches combining his name with these topics returned nothing. iVoterGuide rates him 'Liberal' from public data, and he was endorsed by the pro-science group 3.14 Action, but neither shows a stated position on these issues. 'Open borders' is not a position he or the mainstream Democratic platform has stated. 'Transgender Mutilization of your Children' is a loaded characterization, not a checkable position.

Where the list comes from: As the first-pass analysis noted, the same Election Day batch of Trump posts endorsing Indiana State Senate Republicans used this exact attack text against several different Democratic opponents. It matches the paragraph used against Ross Thomas in the Davis endorsement, for example. The charges come from a template applied to every opponent, not from anything Itnyre said or did. The tax charge runs against his stated platform, and nothing supports the other three. That leaves the claim mostly false. It stops short of false only because his silence on the social issues can't rule out every private view. |

Overall Veracity: 53%