Trump's Depraved Racist Attack on the Obamas Matters Deeply and Must Be Condemned |
I’ve been talking into microphones since I did the morning news on WITL in Lansing Michigan in the late 1960s, and I’ve seen a lot of ugly moments in American politics. But every so often something happens that still takes your breath away, not because it’s surprising, but because it’s so painfully revealing.
This latest racist stunt by Donald Trump — reposting a meme on his Nazi-infested social media site in which the Obamas’ faces are superimposed onto the bodies of primates in the jungle set to the 1961 song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens — is one of those moments.
That a popular pro-Trump account on X created this video and it has lived on that platform without consequence is disgusting in and of itself. But Trump — as our president, speaking in our voice — made it infinitely worse last night by promoting it to millions around the world.
Promoting a video that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as non-human primates isn’t a joke. It isn’t satire or an accident. It’s the oldest racist smear in the book, dressed up in a cheap meme and now blasted out by a man who once swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Normally I wouldn’t post such a disgusting, racist image that originated on Elon’s social media sewer, but it’s important for the historical record for Americans to see what the President of the United States reposted last night on his own site — as your and my representative — for the entire world to see. (Screengrab / Truth Social)
When the president of the United States does something like this, it doesn’t just insult two people. It tells a story about who, according to the most powerful man in the world, belongs in America and who doesn’t.
For centuries, racism in this country has relied on the lie that some people are less than human. That lie has been used to justify slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and mass incarceration.
It’s the lie that made it easier for people to look away while their neighbors were brutalized. It’s the lie that justifies ICE’s brutal, racist behavior. When Trump shares imagery that taps directly into that history, he’s not being edgy: he’s reopening wounds that never fully healed.
Pretending this doesn’t matter is how we normalize it and weaken our shared sense of humanity. And the end point of that is always disaster.
When the President of the United States signals that this kind of racism is acceptable, it gives permission to others. It tells the kid being harassed at school, the family being targeted by a hate group, and the voter being pushed out of the polling line that the cruelty they’re experiencing is justified. That it’s their own fault.
It tells the bullies and thugs of ICE as they do their “Kavanaugh Stops” — targeting people based on their race — that they’re on the........