Trump Deletes Tweet Of Video With ‘White Power’ Chant; White House Says He Didn’t Hear It

On Sunday, President Trump posted a video on Twitter that included footage of dueling protests in Florida’s retirement community The Villages.

“Thank you to the great people of The Villages” Trump wrote in the post. “The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!”

Then he deleted it.

In the video, there were senior citizens shouting profanity at each other, followed by one man in a golf cart shouting, “White power! White power!”

“The golf-cart motorcade was met by anti-Trump seniors standing alongside the same road, who held counter-protester signs that read ‘Trump bigot and racist’ and ‘Donald Trump white trash’ and shouted profanities toward the supporters,” Politico reported. “One among the senior crowd called a supporter a ‘Nazi racist pig.’”

The White House said he hadn’t heard the racist chant when he posted the video.

“President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere said in a statement. “What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

But the president’s post, short-lived as it was, still drew huge blowback from critics – including Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the only black Republican lawmaker in the high legislative chamber.

When shown the video on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday morning, the South Carolina Republican called the video “indefensible.” A short time later, the post was deleted.

“There’s no question: He should not have retweeted it,” Scott said. “He should just take it down.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden took to Twitter to claim that Trump had “picked a side” in “a battle for the soul” of America.

“Today the President shared a video of people shouting ‘white power’ and said they were ‘great.’ Just like he did after Charlottesville,” Biden tweeted. “We’re in a battle for the soul of the nation – and the President has picked a side. But make no mistake: it’s a battle we will win.”

Today the President shared a video of people shouting “white power” and said they were “great.” Just like he did after Charlottesville.

We’re in a battle for the soul of the nation — and the President has picked a side. But make no mistake: it’s a battle we will win.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 28, 2020

In 2017, Trump was criticized after saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of a racial clash in the Virginia college city, home to the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson. Critics pounced, but routinely left out the rest of his quote, when he concluded the sentence by saying, “and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists – because they should be condemned totally.”

CNN host Jake Tapper also asked Human and Health Services Secretary Alex Azar about the president’s Twitter post. “I’ve not seen that video or that tweet,” Azar said. “But obviously, neither the president, his administration, nor I, would do anything to be supportive of white supremacy or anything that would support discrimination of any kind.”

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