President Donald Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.
It came months after another racist post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.
The latest image shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a baby blue and white presidential plane with graffiti painted on it that included the Democrat’s campaign slogan ‘Yes We Can’, ‘Obama’ and ‘BLM’, short for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows graffiti in Arabic on the plane that says the phrase ‘alhamdulillah’, which means “praise be to God" or “thank God".
The use of graffiti is a coded message to remind people of crime and urban decay and has been used in racist messaging against Black people in the past.
Trump has a years-long record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas, and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric. That includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalisations about majority-Black countries and posts that have sparked anger on his Truth Social website.
The president’s racist post of the Obamas as primates came in February, during the first week of Black History Month. It was removed following widespread criticism from civil rights leaders and Republican senators. Trump refused to apologise, however, and a staffer was later blamed for making the post.
This time, the presidential plane is a sensitive topic since Trump last week took his maiden voyage on a new Air Force One – a retrofitted Boeing 747-800 worth USD 400 million gifted by Qatar. The aircraft’s trademark light blue hull that helped Air Force One blend into the sky was replaced with Trump’s preferred colour scheme: a navy-blue belly with red and gold stripes.
After giving a speech on the National Mall in Washington to mark Independence Day and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on Saturday night, Trump had no public events on Sunday and spent the day at his golf club in Virginia. He’s set to leave on Monday for Turkey to attend a summit with NATO allies.
The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Nor did a spokeswoman for the Obamas.
