A day after President Donald Trump sparked outrage by re-tweeting and deleting a post in which a supporter chanted “white power”, a racist slogan, he retweeted Monday a video of a white couple brandishing guns as anti-racism protestors marched by their upscale home in St Lous, Missouri.
The couple Mark and Patricia McCloskey, both personal injury lawyers, can be seen walking around in the video posted Sunday with their weapons — the man was carrying an AR-51 rifle and the woman had a small handgun — and waving them at protestors. One time, they accidentally pointed their weapons at each other.
“Private property!” Mark McCloskey shouted repeatedly at the crowd, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported. “Get out! Private property, get out!”
Protesters were marching to the mayor’s home a block away, to demand her resignation for revealing names and addresses of people who had been calling for defunding the police, which has been one of the key demands at anti-racism demonstration across the country triggered by the killing of George Floyd, an African American man who died in police custody in Minneapolis.
President Trump did not add a comment to the retweet but he has been raging about these protests and the pulling down of statutes of confederate figures and those with any history of racism. Positioning himself as a “law and order” president, he has called for punishing them and has retweeted lookout notices released of suspects involved by law enforcements agencies.
{{/usCountry}}President Trump did not add a comment to the retweet but he has been raging about these protests and the pulling down of statutes of confederate figures and those with any history of racism. Positioning himself as a “law and order” president, he has called for punishing them and has retweeted lookout notices released of suspects involved by law enforcements agencies.
{{/usCountry}}The president has appeared to be siding with racist, which he has and his aides have strenuously denied, but has continued to telegraph support for them through actions that are later rolled back, clarified or denied, such as the retweet of a video of a supporter chanting a racist slogan on Sunday.
The video was posted by a neighborhood for seniors in Florida, the president’s adoptive home state. Just few seconds into it, a man is seen riding a golf cart with Trump campaign slogans written on it. He chanted an unmistakably racist slogan, “White Power, White Power”. And raised a fist.
Trump retweeted it with a brief comment thanking the neighborhood. And he let it be online for four hours.
It was pulled down only after Rick Scott, the only African American Republican in US senate, demanded its removal in an interview to CNN. “There’s no question that he should not have retweeted it and he should just take it down,” Scott said, adding, “It was so profanity laced, the entire thing was offensive. Certainly, the comment about the white power was offensive. It’s indefensible. We should take it down.”
It was taken down immediately after. And the White House, like so many times before, sought to absolve the president of any responsibility for it, arguing he did not entirely know the content of the post. A spokesperson said in a statement the president “did not hear the one statement made on the video”.