Republicans Condemn ‘Incredibly Offensive’ Trump Post About The Obamas | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON ― Republican lawmakers spoke out en masse towards President Donald Trump’s late-night video put up that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first girl Michelle Obama as what seemed to be a cartoon chimpanzee and gorilla.

The GOP backlash started after Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the only real Black Republican within the Senate and the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, denounced the put up on Friday morning.

“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott wrote. “The President should remove it.”

Other Trump allies rapidly adopted go well with. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) mentioned it’s “totally unacceptable,” whereas Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) went additional by calling it “blatantly racist and inexcusable.” Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) mentioned it shouldn’t have been posted, including it’s “not who we are as a nation.”

In the decrease chamber, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) urged Trump to apologize to the previous president and former first girl for his “incredibly offensive” put up, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) described it as “heartbreaking,” and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) dubbed it a “a grave failure of judgment.”

The video shared by Trump parrots his debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories and features a clip towards the top with the Obamas’ faces superimposed on the our bodies of the animals set to the tune “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The bit with the Obamas comes from an extended web video that additionally consists of different outstanding Democrats portrayed as animals, and Trump proven as a lion.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended the put up in a press release to HuffPost early on Friday.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King,’” she mentioned. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

But Trump deleted the put up almost 12 hours after it went up, and solely after outcry from extra Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,” Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) wrote on-line. “The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.”

The White House has provided no apology, nonetheless. Instead, a White House official claimed {that a} staffer “erroneously made the post.”

The sharp GOP pushback to Trump’s typically racist and incendiary on-line posts may be very uncommon. Typically, Republican lawmakers keep away from weighing in or declare they’ll’t remark as a result of they haven’t seen his posts.

Trump had beforehand promoted the racist birther conspiracy idea that Obama was not born within the U.S. It’s simply certainly one of many racist assaults he has launched towards opponents throughout his time in public workplace and earlier than turning into president.

The workplace of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), a possible 2028 presidential candidate, slammed the video as “disgusting behavior by the President” and referred to as on “every single Republican” to denounce it.