Trump Deletes Racist Video Portraying the Obamas as Apes

Comments

• Old_Joe

  February 6

  Trump’s toxic, racist video surpasses previous levels of debasement
  
  Following are excerpts from a current report in The Guardian:
  
  Video deleted by White House breaks through numbness barrier and raises further questions about fitness for office

  It is a singular if highly dubious distinction of Donald Trump’s pungent contribution to the political discourse to have essentially bankrupted the English language’s capacity for outrage. So unremitting and extreme have been the avalanche of affronts since Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to declare his presidential candidacy that even his most ardent critics have become desensitized, leading to a level of shock fatigue.
  
  Yet Trump’s highly racist and offensive late-night Truth Social post depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes broke through the numbness barrier to register on the political Richter scale at a level few of his many previous insults ever achieved. That Trump succeeded in surpassing his own previous levels of debased standards was only emphasized by the decision, taken under fire, to delete the post hours after the White House had initially defended it.
  
  That rare climbdown and the attempts to pin the blame on an anonymous White House staffer are unlikely to prevent the episode from illuminating a topic that much of the media has seemed reluctant to confront head on; that Trump’s behavior, online and in public, has been growing more reckless and raises serious questions about his mental acuity and his fitness for office.
  
  On social media, whisperings that Trump is displaying signs of cognitive decline have increased in recent weeks.
  
  Such chatter has been fed, rather than silenced, by the president’s frequent invocations of multiple cognitive examinations that he claims to have “aced” – boasts that have merely triggered questions as to why he is undergoing such tests in the first place. Providing further grist have been the increasing volume of nocturnal social media posts from a president who appear frequently unrestrained and frantic, even if falling short of the racist toxicity of the Obama video.
  
  On several nights in the past two months, Trump has fired off scores of social media posts in the night hours, including vitriolic attacks on his opponents. On one night in December, he fired off more than 150 posts in a few hours.
  
  At the same time, the president has been observed apparently falling asleep in cabinet meetings and other public forums.

  
  Comment:   Perhaps there is undue concern about Trump falling asleep in meetings. He's likely to do minimal harm when asleep... it's when he's awake that's worrisome. Of course, most of the damage isn't really his fault... there's always that "anonymous White House staffer" to blame.
  
  
• Observant1

  February 6 edited February 6

  Robert Reich published the following within the last hour.
  Bold text was added by me.
  
  "So it was late last night — which happened to be the fifth day of Black History Month —
  when at exactly 11:44 pm Trump posted a video that included a depiction of Barack
  and Michelle Obama as monkeys."
  
  "Now, we all know Trump is a loathsome human being.
  His insults have become an odious staple of his presidency.
  You may remember his AI-generated video of himself as a fighter pilot dumping excrement
  on No Kings Day protesters. Or his AI-generated video of Chuck Schumer
  and Hakeem Jeffries as mariachi performers."
  
  "This morning, White House press secretary hurried into the White House press room
  with her usual pooper-scooper to clean up the mess from last night’s racist post,
  calling it nothing but 'an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle
  and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” and adding, for good measure:
  'Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.'"
  
  "Well, it turns out plenty of Republican members of Congress were outraged, too — and they didn’t fake it.
  'The most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” posted South Carolina Republican Senator
  Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate. 'A reasonable person sees the racist context in this,'
  posted Nebraska Republican Senator Pete Ricketts. 'Totally unacceptable,' posted Mississippi Republican
  Senator Roger Wicker. 'Wrong and incredibly offensive,' posted New York Republican congressman
  Mike Lawler. 'Offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable,' posted Ohio Republican congressman Mike Turner.
  
  "What happened then? Just before noon today, Eastern Time — some 12 hours after Trump
  posted this piece of sh*t — the White House said it had been deleted.
  No apology offered, of course. The White House blamed an unnamed 'White House staffer' for it."
  
  "But you and I and anyone who has paid attention to Trump’s outbursts of bigoted offal
  over the past months knows it came from him."
• Mark

  February 6

  One wonders which White House staffer will end up carrying that bag.