On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump retweeted a video of a man driving a golf cart emblazoned with a Trump sign yelling, “White power!” White power!” Trump has since deleted the tweet, after it drew an outpouring of criticism, including Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate.
“There’s no question that he should not have retweeted it and he should just take it down,” Scott told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
The video stems from a slew of golf carts driving down the streets of a retirement community called The Village in Florida donning Trump paraphernalia. As anti-Trump residents lined the streets shouting at the makeshift parade, a protestor shouted “racist” at the man shouting the antiemetic words.
According to a statement by White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere, he stated that the president is “a big fan of The Villages, but did not hear the one statement made on the video.” However, John Bolton told Jake Tapper that he was more inclined to believe that he never watched the video.
“He doesn’t pay attention to a lot of things,” Bolton said at the “State of the Union.” “It is entirely possible that he tweeted this video because he saw the sign on the first go-cart that said Trump 2020 and that is all he needed to see.”
Of course, the screaming of “white power” occurs just 10 seconds into the video which means if Trump somehow missed the racist exchange he probably didn’t watch any of the video at all.
President Trump is no stranger to controversy regarding white supremacists. During his campaign in 2016, he retweeted something from account with “WhiteGenocideTM” as its moniker. The year before, he retweeted a graphic with false information regarding the percentages of whites killed by blacks. The tweet was traced back to an account with a bio stating: “Should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little mustache.” Few people will forget his comments in 2017 when he referred to a group of white nationalists in Charlottesville, VA as “Very fine people.”
The president has done little help himself in portraying a more racially sensitive approach. He referred to George Floyd protesters as “thugs” and even used the quote “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” which was coined by Miami police chief Walter Headley in 1967 during all the civil unrest.
Just last week, Trump referred to COVID-19 as “Kung flu” and “The China Virus” and rattled off a number of different names for it, seemingly trying to be funny, in front of a group of college kids— perhaps forgetting hundreds of thousands of people have died from coronavirus. Speaking to the 3,000 mask-less students in the packed church where the rally was held, he actually asked what the “19” meant in COVID-19. It is the year, Mr. President, it is the year.
