Trump Racist Meme Sparks Bipartisan Backlash (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is. Then I gave it to the people, generally they'd look at the whole thing, but I guess somebody did. Mr.

[00:00:15] Speaker 2: President, a number of Republicans are calling on you to apologize for that post. Is that something you're going to do?

[00:00:21] Speaker 1: No, I didn't make a mistake.

[00:00:25] Speaker 2: Okay, well, he did eventually remove the post. It had been up for nearly 12 hours, but he did remove it. I want to warn before we show it to you that it is racist and offensive, but it's important to show because this was posted on the official account of the President of the United States. This is what was posted there. You can see here the faces of the Obamas put onto bodies of apes. His decision to take the post down came after the White House initially doubled down on the post itself. This is U.S. Secretary Caroline Leavitt saying, quote, this is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and the Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public. Well, that was said, but then the backlash got loud. Republican Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, came out calling it the most racist thing out of this White House. Esthead Herndon and Andrew Yang are out front now. Pretty incredible, Esthead, okay, on a lot of levels, but it takes them 12 hours to take this down. At first they say, owning exactly what it was, not trying to say it was about voting machines and I didn't see the part about the apes. They actually owned the whole part about the apes and then still took it down.

[00:01:44] Speaker 3: Yeah. The initial response was to defend it as it always is with the Trump White House. And then after the blowback started, we have seen these kind of further retractions. I mean, when I saw this this morning, it is both shocking and not shocking at the same time, right? Like at one, you have the reality of the President of the United States engaging in offensive racist behavior, but you also have a president who has had his whole political rise tied to those very same things. I mean, the origin story of Donald Trump is a racist conspiracy about Barack Obama. So I mean, we cannot extract Donald Trump from the trail of racism that he has left or encouraged. But I think this reflects a White House that is increasingly at a credibility loss too. They have, they are putting their officials out there, Caroline Levin included, and whether it's Minneapolis or whether it's Trump's health or whether it's this video, they're increasingly asking the public to not believe what's in front of them. And I think that has contributed to Donald Trump's increasing unpopularity with the electorate.

[00:02:34] Speaker 2: So, you know, Andrew, the White House obviously now trying to blame it on a White House staffer. Okay. Which, I mean, there's just, there's so much irony in that. You could take the Rob Reiner post, you could take so many posts that they actually haven't even tried to blame on a staffer, right? He goes ahead and posts his own stuff that I don't know anybody thought was okay. In this case, Trump allies are calling to fire the staffer. Bill O'Reilly said you got to fire the staffer right away. Pastor Mark Burns, after speaking with Trump, says my recommendation to the president was direct and firm. The staffer should be fired immediately and the president should publicly condemn this action, which he didn't do, right? He said he didn't make a mistake. But a source familiar with Trump's social media, as I said, with the Rob Reiner, he posts on Truth Social all the time by himself. He posts in the middle of the night by himself, right? So suddenly in this case, it's not, it's, this one somehow upset enough people that he's going to put the fig leaf up.

[00:03:28] Speaker 4: Yeah, the backlash was truly bipartisan, which is something of a rarity in today's politics. I agree with, aside from how violent and disgusting the video was, the first thing that came to mind for me was distraction. Because the actions of ICE in Minneapolis, wildly unpopular, even with many people who voted for Donald Trump. This week, a job report came out saying that it was the worst January for people looking for jobs since 2009.

[00:03:57] Speaker 2: It's 17 years. Let me go back.

[00:03:58] Speaker 4: Yeah. And so I thought to myself, okay, this is Trump throwing something out there to change the news cycle.

[00:04:06] Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I think there has been speculation that he does done that before. We know that that's his instinct is to like, get it back on his terms. I just think even as they lurch at some of their more familiar topics via social stuff or driving what they used to call wokeness or fighting against that. This isn't that. This went way beyond that. This is way beyond that. And so I'm saying even as they try to draw Democrats into culture wars, I think they have miscalculated the moments in which Donald Trump goes way beyond that. The Rob Reiner post is one of that. I think this post is another.

[00:04:40] Speaker 4: Yeah. Worse. Yeah. I mean, the Rob Reiner post didn't get this much from Republican senators. And you had administration allies coming out and saying, fire this guy. Apologize immediately.

[00:04:50] Speaker 5: Joining me now is Harvard University professor and former NAACP President Cornell William Brooks. Professor, the president is saying in furtherance of a lie about voter fraud in Georgia, of which there was not, which is just something he endlessly repeats, like a guy in a bar late at night. He posted or approved the posting of this this meme. What do you make of his explanation and how the White House has kind of come up with various explanations throughout the day?

[00:05:22] Speaker 6: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. What I make of the president's explanation is that it is neither an explanation nor an excuse. We have seen from this White House shifting narratives, the president taking responsibility for posting that which the White House denied and that is subsequently attributed to a young staffer. So in other words, we have shifting narratives, apparent lies, and the president taking not taking responsibility for his actions and the consequences of it. And we need to really be clear here. The president was drawing from a deep, toxic well of racist tropes going back to at least the 1850s with scientific racism. This notion that black people are most closely related to apes and gorillas and simians, such that they are subhuman and sub citizens. And since this president has called into question President Obama's birthplace and his legitimacy, credibility as a citizen, this is true to form. So in other words, this is incredibly offensive. It is not entirely new.

[00:06:40] Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting. You are right. It is also interesting that he doesn't say, you know, had I seen this, I never would have done this. This is, you know, terrible. These images are sickening, you know, and I would never post something like that. And it's interesting to me that I guess he views it as a sign of strength, his refusal to ever apologize, his refusal to admit that he made a mistake. It seems to me, to me, the ultimate sign of weakness that he's so afraid of being seen as making a mistake that he can't admit it when he does.

[00:07:18] Speaker 6: Well, you know, the thing is, it's a sign of weakness in two respects. There's a weakness with respect to admitting a wrong and taking responsibility. But there's also weakness with respect to his inability to resist this racist impulse to demean, to degrade, to belittle black people generally and the country specifically. And what I mean by that is this president seems to think that he is merely insulting the Obamas and black people when he, in fact, is also insulting his supporters. What do we mean by that? He seems to believe that his base and white Americans can be so rage baited and race baited that they will forget high grocery prices or unaffordable homes or a White House that is in absolute chaos. So in other words, he calls into question the humanity, the intelligence and character of black people. But he also calls into question the intelligence and conscience of white people. And so he is so small on so many levels. This is, you know, character, caricature, I should say, character in miniature, microscopic character.

[00:08:37] Speaker 5: Cornel William Brooks, I appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.