Trump Faces Backlash Over Racist Obama Depiction Video (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: To other news now, and President Trump has declined to apologise for a racist video posted on his social media account depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as apes. Mr Trump blamed a member of his staff for what he called a mistake. Now deleted, he's facing a significant backlash over the video, which the BBC is not showing. It is a parody of Disney's Lion King. It depicts Mr Trump as a lion, while senior Democrats are portrayed as various animals worshipping him. The Obamas are the only people depicted as apes. The White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt initially defended the video. Speaking on Air Force One, President Trump said, I didn't see the whole thing, claiming the video was published in error, and he only saw the start of it, which was focused on alleged voter fraud, and he claims he gave it to staff to post. Well, the video provoked widespread criticism, including from many Republicans. Senator Tim Scott, who is black, described it as the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. When asked whether he renounces the racist part, Mr Trump fell short of making an apology.

[00:01:06] Speaker 2: No, I didn't make a mistake. I mean, I look at a lot of thousands of things, and I looked at the beginning of it, it was fine. They had that one post, and I guess it was a take-off. If you look at where it came from, I guess it was a take-off on the Lion King, and certainly it was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud. Nobody knew that that was at the end. If they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down.

[00:01:38] Speaker 1: As we mentioned, there has been a lot of reaction. Yvette Clark is chair of the Congressional Black Caucus in the U.S. She says she isn't surprised by the video being posted.

[00:01:48] Speaker 3: My reaction was the same outrage and alarm that most people of goodwill felt at seeing the video posted by the president of the United States or someone within his orbit. You know, I'm not surprised. I know that many people are a bit shocked, but I'm not. And that's because ever since Donald Trump first ran for office, he was a demonstrated racist. He cooked up a whole myth about President Barack Obama being born in Kenya, the rise of birtherism here in the United States. And so it's just continued, but the stakes have become even higher with his outlandish and quite frankly bigoted behavior. It invokes violence in a very volatile environment that black Americans are living in right now.

[00:03:03] Speaker 1: Well, this was the reaction of Patrice Willoughby, global chief of policy at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

[00:03:12] Speaker 4: The president has used this type of racial rhetoric in the past to create the impression that people of color are less worthy. And so the American public and the global public has recognized that this is a way to cast aspersions, to make other people appear as though they are less worthy of representation. And it was very appropriately condemned widely by politicians of both parties. But it is not surprising because this is what the president has done throughout his tenure.

[00:03:59] Speaker 5: In any other sort of normal walk of life, I think it's fair to say that if there was a CEO, this sort of thing would be career ending. I guess I want to understand, will this matter? Will this just blow over?

[00:04:14] Speaker 4: This is a distraction. The president issues statements like this because it pulls attention away from failed policies that he has on the economy and the lack of standing with other world leaders and the general decline of the U.S. in the eyes of people around the world. Overall, it will not matter. It is a distraction because the American people see what's happening in U.S. cities with the proliferation of border and customs patrol, the growth of essentially secret police that are attacking people who are both citizens and non-citizens and which violates the Constitution. So overall, it's not going to matter because people can differentiate between fact and fiction.

[00:05:14] Speaker 1: Patrice Willoughby, Global Chief of Policy at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, talking to my colleague Norma Iacobo.