The Lion King Excuse Does Not Make the Racist Donald Trump Post Any Better |
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Thursday night, Donald Trump posted something racist enough to break through on social media—a rarity, as his offensive social media posts often go ignored these days. But the visceral, undeniable racism of this particular iteration, and the White House’s initial refusal to express any remorse, pushed it through. And at least one Republican senator expressed disapproval: Sen. Tim Scott, who is Black, called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
The source of all this commotion was a screengrab of a video Trump posted on Truth Social depicting the heads of former first lady Michelle Obama and former President Barack Obama laughing, open-mouthed, on ape bodies.
The screengrab is real, and the underlying video it comes from is stranger than one might expect. Trump posted the video on Truth Social at 8:44 p.m. on Thursday, and it’s actually largely about election fraud, taking you through baseless and frankly dull conspiracy theory material. But at the end, for about two seconds, it flashes to a bright jungle scene, featuring the laughing Obamas, to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
The last two seconds appeared to be clipped into the video for shock humor, meant to throw a laugh in for the racists who had made it all the way through. There is no mitigating “context” here. With or without the election-fraud part, it was........