With the single click of a computer mouse, Donald Trump (or one of his assistants, if the ever-shifting White House narrative of events is to be believed) has delivered manna from his social media account to Democrats gearing up for this year’s US midterm elections.
The President’s reposting of racist imagery depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as primates in a jungle has brought opprobrium on Trump’s head from politicians across the spectrum. But for Democrats seeking to eke out an advantage over the President that could help them secure victory in November, the racist post, coupled with Trump’s ongoing refusal to apologise for it, is the early gift that is likely to keep on giving.
was deleted as anger reverberated around America, in what The New York Times called a “remarkable climbdown“. Jeff Shesol, a historian and former speechwriter, told the publication that it was “surprising” and felt “significant” to see Trump forced to backtrack.
“You’re seeing what I’m seeing, right? The President posting about the Obamas like a Klansman at 1am,” Senator Jon Ossoff declared before supporters at a rally in Atlanta on Saturday night. Considered by some political observers to be the most at-risk incumbent Democrat this November, the Georgia senator immediately tied Trump to the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, painting him as narcissistic and corrupt.
Ossoff: "You're seeing what I'm seeing, right? The president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman." pic.twitter.com/56hNtFtfNh
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 7, 2026“You see our government turned into the tool of one man’s personal vengeance and power and enrichment,” Ossoff thundered.
“You see the President and his family rake in billions while Americans struggle to make ends meet,” he added, accusing Trump’s ICE and Border Patrol agents of “assaulting and even killing Americans with complete immunity from the top”.
Democrats are relishing their newfound ability to try and reverse the big gains that Trump and his fellow Republicans made with Black and Hispanic voters less than two years ago in the 2024 presidential election. While the left is salivating, Republicans are downcast over the President’s social media post and botched White House response to it.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina – in charge of Republican efforts to maintain their majority in the Senate this November – was the most prominent member of the President’s party to urge the deletion of the post and a presidential apology for it, calling it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House”.
Scott, the longest-serving African-American senator in US history, secured the first demand, but not the second.
Congressman Mike Lawler, a Republican fighting a tough re-election battle in New York, called the posting “incredibly offensive – whether intentional or a mistake”. Senator Roger Wicker, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, attacked it as “totally unacceptable”, expressing fury that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had earlier dismissed “fake outrage”.
The difficulty now facing Republicans is that Trump’s behaviour fuels mountains of evidence that he is a racist of long-standing. The brutal treatment being meted out to illegal immigrants as they are dragged off America’s streets and dispatched to detention centres where even their own lawyers struggle to find them, comes after Trump in 2018 referred to African nations as “shit-hole countries”. Last year he repeatedly blasted Somali immigrants as “garbage”.
Allegations of racism have dogged Trump dating as far back as the 70s, when officials found evidence that the real estate mogul had refused to rent to Black tenants and lied to Black applicants about whether apartments were available.
A former employee at Trump’s Atlantic City casino claimed that in the 1980s, bosses would remove Black people from view when he visited, and one former colleague said that in 1988 Trump told him, “Black guys counting my money! I hate it”, while complaining about an accountant, adding, “laziness is a trait in blacks”.
In 1989, Trump placed advertisements in New York newspapers calling for the “Central Park Five” to be executed. But the Black and Latino teenagers convicted of the assault and rape of a jogger had been wrongly accused, and their convictions were overturned in 2002.
Trump was one of the loudest voices in 2011 amplifying the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory that claimed Barack Obama was not born in the United States and should have his US citizenship revoked.
When white supremacist rioters clashed with anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, Trump claimed there were “some very fine people on both sides”. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had not yet pledged fealty to Trump, told reporters at the time that “many Republicans … will fight back against the idea that the party of Lincoln has a welcome mat out for the David Dukes of this world”, a reference to a former Ku Klux Klan leader.
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Less than a decade later, the President’s reposting on social media of the Obamas’ “monkeys” meme is only underscoring how far the party of Lincoln has moved.
There are still nine months before Americans cast their midterm verdict on Trump’s first two years back in power.
Trump on Friday insisted he is “the least racist president you’ve had in a long time”, pointing to criminal justice reform and funding for historically Black colleges and universities, and his success with Black male voters in the last election. But that could be changing.
As early as last August, his approval rating among Black voters was collapsing, down by 25 points in just three months.
And a new poll conducted before Trump’s social media post showed that a narrow majority of white voters no longer approves of his presidency (50 per cent approve/49 per cent disapprove).
Those numbers are sure to take a further nosedive now.
The taint of Trump’s mouse-click may linger long after the inevitable next outrage, and Republican candidates for the House and Senate could end up paying the price.
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