Even if we were to believe Donald Trump’s claim that he did not see the vile image of Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as jungle apes at the end of the video that was re-posted on his social media account last Thursday, he and his minions cannot evade responsibility for their oafish, transparent mendacity and juvenile, undignified behavior, not to mention their obtuse and obvious prejudices against anyone who is not a member of their tribe.
When the accusations of racism began to fly in response to the video, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, in her usual sneering manner, called it “fake outrage.” She had to backtrack when it turned out that one of those whose outrage was anything but fake was Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Trump-supporting Black conservative. Scott said posting the Obama image was “the most racist thing” he had yet seen come out of the White House.
White House staffers then switched tactics and blamed an unnamed staff member for sending out the racist image under the president’s name by “mistake.” At the same time, the president, himself, refused to apologize for the image and, instead, praised the message that preceded the malicious defamation of the Obamas – that message being yet another lunatic claim that American elections are rigged and the 2020 presidential vote count was a fraud.
A new level of craziness was achieved when Leavitt and other Trump defenders absurdly claimed that the image was really not what it seemed to be – the latest in countless depictions of Black people as monkeys and apes. Rather, it showed the Obamas as characters from Disney’s “The Lion King,” they insisted.
The obvious problem with that cover story is that there are no apes in “The Lion King.”
Trump and his knuckleheaded enablers have proven again that they lack integrity, generosity, humility and good taste. Their juvenile antics are an embarrassment. But really, it is much worse than that. In an interview with the Associated Press, Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, cut to the rotten core of the problem in Trump’s White House:
“They don’t tell the truth. If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from. … Here we are, in the year 2026, celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, the 100th anniversary of the commemoration of Black history, and this is what comes out of the White House on a Friday morning. It’s beneath all of us.”
See more of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.news/davidhorsey
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