Overview

• Posting on Truth Social, the president called for George Soros and Alexander Soros to be prosecuted under the RICO statute for allegedly supporting violent protests.
• He offered no specific evidence to underpin the accusations or to explain a new trigger for the demand.
• The Open Society Foundations said they do not pay people to protest or directly train or coordinate demonstrators, describing their support as focused on civil society and nonviolent expression.
• Trump escalated his rhetoric by labeling Soros’s circle a “group of psychopaths” and warning Soros’s “friends on the West Coast” that “we are watching you.”
• Reporting notes that George Soros, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and longtime donor to liberal causes, has long been the subject of conspiracy narratives, with prior media fact-checks debunking claims such as NGOs placing paving stones at protests.