WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.
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It came months after another racist post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.
The latest image shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a baby blue and white presidential plane with graffiti painted on it that included the Democrat’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” “Obama” and “BLM,” short for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows graffiti in Arabic on the plane that says the phrase “alhamdulillah,” which means “praise be to God” or “thank God.”
The use of graffiti is a coded message to remind people of crime and urban decay and has been used in racist messaging against Black people in the past.
Trump has a yearslong record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas, and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric. That includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and posts that have sparked anger on his Truth Social website.
The president’s racist post of the Obamas as primates came in February, during the first week of Black History Month. It was removed following widespread criticism from civil rights leaders and Republican senators. Trump refused to apologize, however, and a staffer was later blamed for making the post.
This time, the presidential plane is a sensitive topic since Trump last week took his maiden voyage on a new Air Force One — a retrofitted Boeing 747-800 worth $400 million gifted by Qatar. The aircraft’s trademark light blue hull that helped Air Force One blend into the sky was replaced with Trump’s preferred color scheme: a navy-blue belly with red and gold stripes.
After giving a speech on the National Mall in Washington to mark Independence Day and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on Saturday night, Trump had no public events on Sunday and spent the day at his golf club in Virginia. He’s set to leave Monday for Turkey to attend a summit with NATO allies.
The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Nor did a spokeswoman for the Obamas.
Sunday’s post also followed one from last month when Trump shared a doctored image of Obama’s new presidential library in Chicago, so that it looked like the building had a large bag of garbage on top and was surrounded by a wasteland. “The Obama Library ten years from now will be a ‘Mecca’ for those who hate America! President DJT,” he wrote then.
Trump has frequently criticized the Obama library in public comments, and he posted the library image twice on his social media platform.
The Air Force One image was part of a series of Sunday posts Trump made on Truth Social, including a past picture that appeared to show Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni grinning and gazing upward at Trump under the words “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.”
That, too, could touch off a new firestorm at this week’s meetings in Turkey, since Trump had suggested that Meloni asked “over and over” for a photo with him during the recent Group of Seven summit — and suggesting she begged for such a picture.
Trump’s comments prompted Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to cancel a subsequent, planned trip to Washington, while Meloni called Trump’s account “completely fabricated,” saying “Italy and I never beg.”
When any Israeli infraction is singled out but not other countries’ similar or worse infractions, we scream “ANTISEMITISM!” (In fact, this is a prime example of IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism.)
So when imagery of graffiti is used solely in relation to a black person of a certain stature but not similarly used in connection with white persons of similar stature, then that would similarly fall under the definition of racism.
Sorry for the inconvenient truth, but you simply can’t have it both ways.
The ‘ president ‘ has no class
The AP is the judge, jury, and executioner; if they decide it’s racist, then all the gullible idiots who watch The View will declare it to be racist too. We have the same thing with Al Jazeera; they decided the war in Gaza is genocide, so the kaffia wearers scream genocide.
Again with the stupid AP Propaganda, there’s nothing racist about this, just Trump being Trump.
There is absolutely nothing racist about that photo! Stupid maybe , but clearly not racist. The editors dropped the ball on this one.
What else is new? Like there’s some novelty in Trump’s silliness.
People are gonna go bezzerk of news boredom when we go back to a normal boring POTUS.
Why do you post slanted anti Trump from the press?????
I read vin hoping not to have to see this kind of slanted news Please enough biased coverage that you just copy from your slanted news source!!!!!!!!
Trump is not fit to hold the highest office in our country. He is a child. Those who defend, and even praise him, are children as well.
This reeks of the WP. No doubt it is them. Note that there is nothing too vile that Obama wouldn’t say about Trump. But at least its not racist. Only returning the nastiness is deemed racist.
after 8 years of obama playing the race card, it’s a bit rich to just now notice that the obamas are black. or as the msm put it, some ethnic groups are more equal than others, when it comes to “criticism”.
Trump=national disgrace