United President Donald Trump retweeted a video featuring one of his supporters loudly shouting “white power”. The supporter was surrounded by a group of people taking part in a Trump rally at a retirement center in Florida. The footage recorded both opponents and supporters of the Republican President hurling abuses and swearing at one another. Trump has rejected the accusations that he is seeking gains from racial tensions. His spokesman says he did not listen to the ‘white power’ chant in the video.
In the tweet, which was later deleted, the president thanked “the great people of The Villages”.
“Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!,” the President wrote while referring to the retirement community north-west of Orlando as he addressed his supporters.
The video linked with the Trump’s commentary showed a Trump supporter in a golf cart raising a clenched fist and shouting “white power”. Apparently, the President was responding to a protester calling him a racist and swearing at him and his followers. Other anti-Trump crowd chanted “Nazi” and other profanities at the those attending the rally.
Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate of United States in an interview given to the CNN on Sunday condemned the video as offensive and urged Trump to remove his tweet.
“There’s no question that he should not have retweeted it and he should just take it down,” Mr. Scott told the network.
WH spokesman Judd Deere defended Trump saying, “he did not hear the one statement made on the video” but saw “tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters”. Commenting on the Trump’s comment, US Secretary o Health and Human Services, Alex Azar said “neither the president, his administration nor I would do anything to be supportive of white supremacy”.
The Republican in the WH has on a number of occasions in the past have been accused of promoting and spreading the racist content. In 2017, he retweeted 3 provocative videos uploaded by British far-right group forcing a rebuke from then United Kingdom PM Theresa May. He was widely criticized in 2019 when he called on four US congresswomen – Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”. 3 of the 4 congresswomen had their births in US and all 4 were had United States citizenship.
In response to the mass demonstrations in recent weeks after the killing of African-American George Floyd, Trump warned on Twitter that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” as he reminded everybody of Miami’s aggressive police chief Walter Headley’s sayings that glorified the violence during the civil rights movement in 1967. Detecting the violation of its policy guidelines, twitter removed President’s tweet.
