U.S. President Donald Trump shared on his Twitter account a video of a confrontation between opposition protesters and supporters of his government in which a man praises “white power.” The video spent a few hours on the account of the representative, although it was erased after receiving a shower of criticism for stoking racial tensions in the country.
Filming, apparently made in the retirement community The Villages in Florida, shows a man driving a golf cart with the signs “Trump 2020” and “America First” who repeatedly shouts “white power” with a hand wielding, a slogan worn by white supremacists. “Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” Trump tweeted. “The radical left does nothing. Democrats will fall.”
In response, White House spokesman Judd Deere assured the press that “the president is a big fan of The Villages and did not hear the only statement made in the video.” The spokesman added that Trump did see “tremendous enthusiasm from many of his supporters.” The White House chose not to answer if Trump condemned his follower’s supremacist phrase.
History of racist statements
The Videos for The Villages provoked an immediate backlash on social media, and Trump’s allies were pressured to refer to him on Sunday morning talk shows. The only black SEN of the Republican Party, Tim Scott, interviewed on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, called the video “offensive.”
“I think it’s indefensible. We should eliminate it. That’s what I think,” Scott said, adding that “certainly the commentary on ‘white power’ is offensive.” Also on CNN, Trump’s secretary of health, Alex Azar, claimed he had not seen the images or tweet. “But obviously the president, his administration or myself would never support white supremacy or discrimination of any kind,” he said.
Trump has been accused of racism for his attacks on black lawmakers and for telling Afro-descendant parliamentarians that they should “go back and help fix completely broken and crime-plagued places where they came from.” In June 2017, referring to the clashes between neo-Nazis and anti-racists in Charlottesville, Virginia, the president had declared that there were “very good people on both sides.”
