David S. Harewood is a mostly theatre-based interdisciplinary storytelling artist and advocate.
This column has been updated.
The term expected shock came to mind during Donald Trump’s first administration. It resurfaced during my morning coffee Feb. 6 as I scrolled over images of the 44th president and his first lady superimposed onto apes.
I’m sure there’s a more eloquent way to phrase the feeling, but it sticks in my mind as a way we began to describe our moral disgust over actions that we’d come to expect from the man who then, and now, holds the highest office in our federal government.
As much as MAGA’s dear leader has denied his racism and claimed to be “the least racist person,” Trump’s acolytes harbor no such illusions.
After Bad Bunny’s multilingual, multiethnic Super Bowl performance, Trump favorite right-winger Laura Loomer posted “This isn’t white enough for me” as part of her rant on X, formerly Twitter.
Racism has always been at the core of the MAGA movement.
Whether they take responsibility for that now or not depends upon whether they’re willing to look at themselves honestly and determine what that racism does to the heart of their movement and the country as a whole.
But really, brazen examples of bigotry, misogyny, ableism, and the sort of racism gleefully posted (and, 12 hours later, deleted) are nothing new coming from Donald Trump.
Remember the Central Park Five?
Two years after publication of the 1987 ego-stroking book he paid a journalist to ghostwrite for him, the then-nepobaby tycoon — Trump’s father taught him how not to rent to Black people — took out a full-page ad accusing five Black and Latino teenagers of raping a white female jogger.
The Central Park Five were exonerated in 2002 despite Trump’s attempts to stoke public opinion against them.
Then there was that time he referred to African and South American countries as “s—holes.” His administration vehemently denied it at the time, but in December, Trump admitted he made the comments and even bragged.
So no, there’s nothing particularly surprising that a president who’s spent a career stoking white grievance and peddling racist tropes would repost such a puerile and vile video.
He chases attention with more passion than PePe LePew after the black cat. Trump denies having racist feelings, but we know he lies as easily as he breathes.
.Naturally, his omission of any blatantly racist words excuses him, to himself and his base, of the accusation that was launched not only by members of the so-called “radical left lunatics” like me, but in this last fiasco from moderate and traditionally conservative Republicans alike — including Tim Scott, the sole Black Republican in the Senate.
So the video has been deleted, and the president has claimed, once again, that he’s the “least racist” president “in a long time.” At least this time he didn’t say “ever.”
This is the man who claimed not to know anything about David Duke in one instance and pushed the birther conspiracy theory about then-President Obama the next.
And he’s the one who’s equivocated about white nationalist rallies, pushed the Great Replacement and terrorized Springfield by pushing a racist trope about legal Haitian refugees and immigrants eating housepets.
So there’s no surprise in his having shared the video, nor denying it (Trump told reporters he didn’t personally post it), nor in his claims of being “the best for African Americans.”
Trump isn’t a platypus
The shock, however, is these claims’ blatant mendacity about such blatant bigotry as espoused by this White House.
There’s no question as to whether we have a malicious, narcissistic, bigoted president; the question: Will the members of the movement he leads admit to theirs, and what will they do about it?
I’d venture a guess, but it would further erode my trust in humanity and, as such, I’d rather not.
Some will insist that if an entity looks like a duck and walks like a duck and molts like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
MAGA’s base and leaders would have you believe that ducks are platypuses.
Those of us with eyes, ears, and a touch of human discernment know better.
The MAGA movement should, too. Otherwise, they own every (expectedly) shocking, vile video shared by the president’s personal social media account.
David S. Harewood is a mostly theatre-based interdisciplinary storytelling artist and advocate.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Trump’s quacks like a racist. After ape post, MAGA can’t pretend he’s a ‘platypus’ | Opinion
Reporting by David S. Harewood, Guest Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
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