A White Van Laden With Stickers Is at Center of Bombing Investigation

AVENTURA, Fla. — One sticker has a Photoshopped image of President Donald Trump standing on a tank, haloed by fireworks with an American flag behind him. “Dishonest Media,” reads another one, the CNN logo affixed to it. And then there are the memes expressing support for the president and animosity toward his critics.

A white van plastered with these and other bombastic stickers was seized from a South Florida shopping center Friday morning, in connection with Cesar A. Sayoc Jr., a man the federal authorities have charged with mailing a string of packaged bombs to a range of high-profile Democrats.

Photographs of the van, believed to be Sayoc’s mode of transportation and his home, is a kind of Facebook feed on wheels: Many of the decals appear to show widely-circulated conspiratorial internet memes that Sayoc himself posted in repetitive bursts on his social media accounts.

“He communicates in meme,” said Jonathan Albright, a researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University who was analyzing Sayoc’s social media accounts Friday. “The van is basically his identity, in meme.”

It also may have been where he slept. Manuel Prado, a 56-year-old hairdresser at a salon in the shopping center where the van was often parked, said he had seen Sayoc living in the vehicle for the past several years.

“I knew right away it was him when I saw the pictures of the van today in the news,” Prado said as he prepared to cut a customer’s hair. “It was really smelly when he had the door open and you walked by. It was horrible. He might drive off and run an errand or something, but every morning that van was there in the parking lot.”

Several of the political decals portray those who received some of the 13 packages that the FBI linked to Sayoc, including CNN, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder. George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor and another bomb target, also appears to be on a sticker.

The back windows of the van bear American flag stickers and are covered with paeans to God, the military and the president. Some of the lettering is covered with new decals, suggesting that Sayoc was updating his messaging.

Soccer is also a theme: North Carolina college soccer teams are praised on the back windows. “Top Youth Soccer Recruits for Trump,” reads one decal. Others refer to the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

But most of the van is devoted to pro-Trump, anti-Democrat messages that seem to have been cut and pasted directly from Facebook and Twitter.

His van appeared in his social feed, too, with photographs of van decals — a jumble of slogans like “We Vote Pro-Life” and “Americans & Americans First” — posted to Sayoc’s Twitter feed.

A collage on a right-rear window, which also appears on a window on the left side, features campaign images of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. A slogan closer to the front of the van reads, “I am Donald Trump & I Approve This Message.”

Other images portray prominent liberal critics of Trump, including filmmaker Michael Moore and Jill Stein, a Green Party candidate for president, whose face appears in crosshairs.

Then there are the memes. “The Swamp to Be Drained,” for instance, invokes Trump’s “Drain the swamp” campaign slogan, and shows prominent Democrats and media figures in a swamp, along with phrases like “Not Enforcing Immigration Laws'’ and “Clinton’s Illegal Email Server'’ and the Black Lives Matter logo.

Another shows a photo of people running and is captioned “Millions of liberals cross the border illegally into Mexico to escape Donald Trump’s presidency.” Larger text above it reads: “I Have a Dream.”

The van reflects the power of memes, which can spread quickly with emotional visuals and few words, said Albright, of Columbia. “They can inspire in good ways and also in bad ways.'’

As photographs of the vehicle circulated Friday, it became an object of much fascination on social media. Some people posted photographs that they had taken of the van months ago.

Others wondered about the nature of the decals. Were some of them affixed from the inside? How much had they cost?

“Bumper stickers don’t last more than a few weeks in Florida heat,” read one post on Reddit, where the van was a topic of much discussion. “He had to have been replacing these every few weeks to keep them that nice.”