While former special counsel Jack Smith was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday, President Donald Trump turned his firing squad online — unleashing a barrage of threats, insults, and conspiracy‑flavored rants on Truth Social aimed squarely at Smith.
As Smith laid out the evidence and defended his decisions in the federal cases against Trump, the president was off the clock, furiously pounding his keyboard in an escalating meltdown.
“Deranged Jack Smith is being DECIMATED before Congress,” Trump fumed, in one of nearly 50 posts he flooded Truth Social with in under an hour. “It was over when they discussed his past failures and unfair prosecutions. He destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy.”
Trump didn’t stop there. In classic campaign‑rally syntax he escalated from insults to threats: “Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse!”
Then the revenge fantasy launched: “Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me. The whole thing was a Democrat SCAM — A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!”
As lawmakers inside the hearing room sparred over testimony on January 6, the threat environment, and what evidence actually shows about the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Trump opted for a televised‑by‑social‑post strategy: scattershot chaos from the safety of his feed.
He peppered followers with old video clips, incendiary unfounded accusations against Minnesota leadership, random calls for the Supreme Court to boot Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and even far‑right interview clips featuring figures like Megyn Kelly and James Woods. The litany of posts read less like responses to testimony and more like a compilation of online outrage hits.
Then, because no meltdown is complete without amplification, Trump followed up his own posts by reposting fans who echoed his talking points, doubling down on claims and riffing off every thread of adulation he could find.
The barrage also included clips of various individuals praising him — and, bizarrely, claims that he was a supporter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Inside the hearing room, Republicans and Democrats were locked in a bitter battle over the facts of January 6 and Smith’s prosecutions. Outside of it, Trump seemed to have declared Truth Social the official alternate hearing chamber — one where evidence doesn’t matter, and hyperbole runs wild.
