Trump Goes Full Racist During Black History Month
My conversation with Joy Reid, Waj Ali, Tim Wise, and Karen Attiah about Trump promoting images of the Obamas as apes on social media.
On last night's episode of The Joy Reid Show, I joined Joy and a panel to discuss Donald Trump’s disturbing post depicting former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. In a rare capitulation, Trump did remove the post, but he refused to apologize for posting it. Such an act—especially during the opening days of Black History Month—would be a career-ending move for a political leader of any party in a more humane era of American politics. Trump has shrugged it off, but I argue that we should register this as another bright line being crossed, one with knowable chilling implications.
I’m sharing our half hour conversation here, along with a summary of my remarks.
My Take
In addition to being a scholar who has studied white supremacy and the ways it has embedded itself in American religion and politics, I’m from Mississippi.
Such dehumanizing imagery was immediately familiar to me from cartoons, jokes, and serious arguments about the superiority of white people, propped up with assertions that Black people lacked civilization (were inhabitants of the jungle) and full humanity (were more ape than human). I, and we, know where such racist rhetoric leads: to a dulling of the conscience, a disfiguring of the spirit, and ultimately bodies riddled with bullets hanging from trees.
While this latest action is a new low, it is fully consistent with Trump’s past racist behavior. Trump has repeatedly used racist, dehumanizing rhetoric—framing non-white people as animals, vermin, contaminants, or infestations—in ways that strip people of basic human standing. Here are just a few examples:
“Animals” / “not human” (immigrants)
Trump described immigrants as “animals” and “not human” during a 2024 campaign speech in Michigan (Reuters).“Vermin” to be “root[ed] out” (political opponents)
in November 2023, Trump said he would “root out” political enemies who “live like vermin,” language echoing Nazi rhetoric (ABC News).“Poisoning the blood of our country” (immigrants)
Trump claimed migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States in a December 2023 rally in Durham, New Hampshire (C-SPAN video clip)“Infest” (immigration framed as pestilence)
Trump used the term “infest” to describe immigrants “pour[ing] into and infest[ing] our Country” in June 2018, a pests/contagion frame (TIME).“Garbage” (Somalian immigrants in Minneapolis)
During an official 2025 Cabinet meeting, Trump targeted members of the Somali community, saying their home nation is “barely a country” and calling them “garbage” (TIME)“Monsters” (Venezuelan immigrants)
And this week, at the National Prayer Breakfast of all places, Trump bragged about removing “2,000 monsters” from Washington, DC, referring to Venezuelan immigrants he claimed were gang members (Roll Call transcript).
Common sense tells us that elite leaders, particularly someone hold the office of the president of the United States, influence their followers’ attitudes. Recently published research shows that Trump’s ability to degrade his white supporters’ moral sensibilities is real and measurable (h/t to Andrew Whitehead for pointing me to this research).
In their peer-reviewed article, “Trickle Down Racism,” researchers Ashley Jardina (University of Virginia) and Spencer Piston (Boston University) measured dehumanizing attitudes using the following question in an online survey:
Using the image below, please indicate using the sliders how evolved you consider the average member of each group [whites, Blacks] to be:
Researchers found the following:
Reported hate crimes against Black people surged following Trump's 2016 election. While only a relatively small fraction of Americans committed these abhorrent actions, we show that Trump's victory had broader effects on the attitudes of the larger white public. Specifically, Trump altered the extent to which white survey respondents describe Black people in dehumanizing ways. We report findings from a two-wave national survey in which white respondents rated Black people on a dehumanizing attitudes scale before and after the 2016 presidential election. Trump supporters rated Black people as less "evolved” in the post-election wave than they rated Black people in the pre-election wave.
Here’s a visualization of the results. The steeper dotted line represents the stronger post-election relationship between white respondents’ warm feelings for Trump and their lower ratings of their Black fellow citizens along an imagined evolutionary continuum.
This awful depiction of the Obamas as apes is a new low, even for Trump.
We should refuse to let Trump, or any Republican or self-proclaimed Christian who supports him, shrug this bigotry off. They should own it or denounce it. If Trump’s supporters refuse to denounce Trump’s racism, we should understand that they are claiming it—and enabling all of its downstream consequences—with their silence.
As a reminder, Joy Reid and I will continue our ongoing “Confronting White Christian Nationalism” series on the third Wednesday of each month. Next show is February 18 in the 7:00 p.m. ET hour. I’ve linked to two past episodes below.
Here are links to the other guests so you can follow their work:
THE LEFT HOOK with Wajahat Ali
Tim Wise
Karen Attiah
ICYMI
And check out the latest episode of The Convocation Unscripted, where Jemar Tisby, PhD , Kristin Du Mez , and I unpack Trump’s rambling speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. ( Diana Butler Bass was on the road this week). You can subscribe below to tune into our conversation each week and live on the first Thursday of each month.
Thank you for this. Yes, they must denounce it; otherwise they own it.