President Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of late-night posts on Truth Social on May 11, publishing more than fifty messages in a single overnight session that targeted former officials, revisited longstanding grievances, and escalated his attacks on former President Barack Obama to some of the most inflammatory language he has used to date.
The posts drew widespread attention — not only for their volume and the late hour at which they appeared, but for the intensity of the rhetoric directed at a former president who left office nearly a decade ago.
What Trump Posted
Among the more than fifty Truth Social messages published overnight, Trump amplified content from a MAGA-aligned account that described Obama as the most “demonic force in American politics in decades.” He reposted a call to arrest, prosecute, and imprison a long list of individuals, with Obama named specifically at the top of the list, alongside language referencing treachery, treason, and seditious conspiracy.
One reposted message read: “Arrest them all. Prosecute them all. Incarcerate them all at once for treachery, treason, and seditious conspiracy to overthrow the United States government. But first Barack Obama.”
Another reposted account wrote simply: “Arrest Obama the traitor.”
Trump also reposted claims that Obama had fabricated evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — the contest that Trump won against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. These claims are unproven and have been repeatedly disputed.
Several of Trump’s posts focused on what he described as the use of federal agencies to spy on his 2016 campaign — a claim he characterized as “the biggest political crime in American history.” These posts were accompanied by footage that appeared to be from the previous year, centered on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and a 2020 intelligence report she claimed linked Obama to efforts to discredit Trump over Russian interference.
Hillary Clinton was also targeted in the overnight posting session, with Trump revisiting claims connecting Obama to Clinton’s use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State.
Obama’s Response to Past and Present Attacks
Obama has addressed claims of this nature before. When similar assertions were made in prior years, he described them as “bizarre” and characterized them as a weak attempt at distraction — a response that has been consistent across multiple rounds of similar accusations.
More recently, Obama has spoken about the broader toll that remaining a figure in American political life has taken on him personally. In a conversation with The New Yorker, he acknowledged the strain his continued public involvement has placed on his marriage to former First Lady Michelle Obama.
“It does create a genuine tension in our household, and it frustrates her,” Obama said. “I’m more forgiving of it, in the sense that I understand why people feel that way, because people aren’t looking at me in historical comparison to other presidents. They don’t care about the fact that no other ex-president was the main surrogate for the party for four election cycles after they left office.”
Obama also addressed Trump’s decision to share a video depicting him and Michelle Obama as apes — racist content that drew condemnation across political lines.
“I’m always offended when my wife and kids get dragged into things, because they didn’t choose this,” Obama told The New Yorker. “That’s a line that even people whose politics I deeply reject, I would expect them to care about. I would never talk about somebody’s family in that way.”
Trump’s Broader Views on Obama
The overnight posts were not the first time Trump has made his opinion of Obama clear in explicit terms. Speaking at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s fundraising dinner earlier this year, Trump described Obama in front of a Republican audience as a president who actively divided the country.
“If you go back to Obama, he was a great divider. He divided this nation. He was a lousy president,” Trump said at the dinner, adding that while he considered Biden the worst president in American history, Obama ranked as “a terrible president” in his view.
The remarks fit a pattern of public hostility between the two men that has continued well beyond the end of Obama’s presidency in January 2017. Trump’s use of Truth Social — the platform he founded after his removal from mainstream social media — has given him a direct and unfiltered channel for these attacks, and overnight posting sessions of this scale have become an occasional feature of his second term.
Why This Story Matters
The overnight posting session is notable for several reasons beyond its content.
The sheer volume — more than fifty posts in a single night — represents an unusual use of a sitting president’s time and attention. The escalation of language around Obama, from “terrible president” at a fundraising dinner to “demonic force” and calls for imprisonment on social media, reflects a hardening of rhetoric that has become increasingly normalized in American political discourse.
For everyday Americans, the divide between the two men serves as a kind of shorthand for the broader polarization of the country. Obama remains a popular figure among Democrats and a lightning rod for criticism from the right. Trump remains the defining force in Republican politics. Their ongoing feud — conducted now largely through public statements, social media posts, and media interviews — shapes the political atmosphere that millions of Americans navigate every day.
Obama’s candid acknowledgment that his continued public life strains his marriage adds a human dimension to what can otherwise feel like an abstraction — a reminder that behind the politics are people, families, and costs that don’t always make the headlines.
What Comes Next
There has been no indication from Trump’s administration that the late-night posts signal any formal legal action against Obama or others named in the overnight session. Calls for the arrest or imprisonment of former officials by a sitting president are extraordinary in American political history and would face significant constitutional and legal obstacles.
Obama has not issued a direct response to the most recent round of posts at the time of publication.
The posts have, however, reignited debate about the appropriate boundaries of presidential communication, the power of social media as a tool for political rhetoric, and the ongoing question of where the line falls between free expression and incitement — questions that show no sign of resolving any time soon.
