“I love him,” Foresia Cook said of Trump at a Black History Month event. “I don’t want to hear anything you say about anything racist.”
President Trump refuses to apologize for posting video showing Obama and his wife as monkeys
President Donald Trump has refused to apologize for sharing a video depicting former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
President Donald Trump celebrated Black History Month with a White House event that honored late civil rights icon Jesse Jackson and drew praise from Black supporters, two weeks after his administration was rocked by a video that depicted former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as monkeys.
President Trump opened the Feb. 18 event in the East Room of the White House by praising Jackson, a two-time Democratic presidential candidate and one of the nation’s most prominent black leaders who died on Feb. 17.
“He was a great guy, a good guy,” Trump said of Jackson. “He was a true hero. I would like to pay my utmost respect to Reverend Jesse Jackson.”
Black speakers pushed back against criticism during the event, praising the president for his service to the black community.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that this president here, Donald Trump… is not for Black America, because he is for Black America,” said Trump Pardon Czar Alice Johnson. “I’m standing here today to prove how he feels about Black Americans.”
Trump shared a video of the Obamas on his Truth Social account earlier this month, which quickly drew bipartisan condemnation from lawmakers as racist. “I hope this is fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve ever seen in this White House,” said Sen. Tim Scott, a Black Republican from South Carolina.
The White House initially defended the video, but it was later removed from the president’s social media accounts. President Trump has refused to apologize, saying he only watched the beginning of the nearly one-minute video, which begins with baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, and not the part about the Obamas that has been widely condemned as racist.
Trump said at the time that he was “the least racist president we’ve had in a while” and that he was “great” for black voters, citing criminal justice reform and other policies. The president continued to emphasize criminal justice reform measures along with funding for historically black colleges and universities during the Feb. 18 event.
President Trump has praised the contributions of the black community to the military, music and sports, including former boxer Mike Tyson and rapper Nicki Minaj, appearing with him at a recent event and declaring, “I’m probably the president’s biggest fan, and that’s not going to change.”
Trump said Tyson had been “very loyal” to defending the president from accusations of racism.
“Every time they come out and say, ‘Trump is a racist,’ … Mike Tyson says, ‘He’s not a racist, he’s my friend,'” Trump said.
President Trump invited Folecia Cook, a black grandmother whose grandson was murdered in Washington, D.C., to speak at an event. She touted the deployment of the National Guard.
“I love him,” Cook said. “I don’t want to hear anything you say about anything racist.”
In the wake of President Obama’s video, President Trump also clashed with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, the nation’s only black governor, this month by excluding him from a bipartisan gubernatorial caucus at the White House.
“As the nation’s only Black governor, I cannot ignore the added weight of being chosen to be excluded from this bipartisan tradition, whether intentional or not,” Moore said in a statement.
President Trump has sought to reshape the way history is presented at the beginning of his second term, ordering federal agencies to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs and complaining in social media posts that the Smithsonian’s museums focus too much on “how bad slavery was.”
On February 16th, a federal judge strongly criticized the Trump administration and ordered the reinstatement of slavery exhibits on the grounds of the presidential mansion in Philadelphia. The Trump administration is appealing the ruling.
