"it also seems to have been an attempt to use racism to break the growing coalition against him"
February 6, 2026
Heather Cox Richardson
Feb 07, 2026
Late last night, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted a video full of debunked claims about the 2020 presidential election that included an image of former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama with their heads attached to the bodies of apes.
Predictably, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt derided the “fake outrage” over the image, but as Tim Grieve of NOTUS explained, when Republican senators Tim Scott of South Carolina, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi called out the racism behind the post, the president deleted the video and a White House official said that a “staffer erroneously made the post,” as if somehow a staffer could post random racist videos from the president’s account in the middle of the night. As soon as they could blame the post on a staffer, Republicans rushed to condemn the post’s racism.
Later tonight on Air Force One, Trump said that he had posted it himself. When a reporter asked if he would apologize, he said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
While the post exhibited both the president’s vile racism and his failing impulse control, it also seems to have been an attempt to use racism to break the growing coalition against him. As when they arrested Black journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort as well as Black protesters at a church while leaving white protesters free, Trump and his allies are hammering on racial fault lines. As with the ape trope, the White House went so far as to digitally alter a photograph of church protester and civil rights activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, who appeared to be quite composed during her arrest, to make her look blacker and as if she is sobbing in terror. ........................(more)
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-6-2026
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Black History Month?
I'm sure that has prompted him to be extra racist because he can't change it from being Black History Month.
