After a video was posted on Donald Trump’s website last week depicting former U.S. president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as apes, the outcry was loud, even among some of the president’s most fervent supporters.
Notably absent among the Republican critics of the artificial-intelligence-generated, 62-second video, which was taken down some 12 hours after it was posted on Trump’s Truth Social account late Thursday, were top Georgia Republicans and the Georgia GOP.
Not a word on social media from Gov. Brian Kemp, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, Speaker of the House Jon Burns or state GOP chairman Josh McKoon. Not a word from Coastal Georgia Congressman Earl “Buddy” Carter or his two rivals for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, Mike Collins and Derek Dooley.
What makes the failure to publicly condemn the video noteworthy and the contradictions glaring — especially for a state party that boasts of its “big tent” ambitions — is that three weeks earlier, some of these same top Republicans went on social media to extol Martin Luther King, Jr. on the civil rights leader’s birthday.
“Today we remember and reflect on the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” the Georgia GOP wrote.
“Today, we honor Martin Luther King Jr. — a leader who didn’t just dream of change but worked to make it real. A leader. A dreamer. A believer. May we all honor his legacy and live by his example,” Jones said.
Carter reposted an accolade from House Republicans: “Today we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader who shared those immortal words: ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.'”
For their part, Georgia’s two U.S. senators lambasted Trump for the video’s use of an racist image of Blacks based in eugenics and dating back to the Jim Crow era.
At a rally Saturday in Atlanta, Jon Ossoff described Trump as “a president posting about the Obamas like a Klansman at 1 a.m.” Raphael Warnock was equally scathing.
“All people of conscience have to condemn this with all our might,” he said. “This is evil. It’s part of the spiritual rot in the country. And it’s coming from the White House. “
‘Totally unacceptable’
Not all Republicans were so reluctant to speak out and risk President Trump’s wrath.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, posted online. “Totally unacceptable,” Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker said.
The two Republican, southern senators weren’t alone in the backlash to the video, which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended as a joke, calling the outcries “fake outrage.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, a staunch Trump ally,said the video was “wrong and incredibly offensive.” Another Republican, Michael Turner of Ohio denounced the “racist images” as “offensive, heart-breaking and unacceptable.”
Prominent right-wing influencers savaged Republican critics of the video, with one, Gunther Eagleman, commenting on Lawler’s post: “You are too soft to be in politics… Or switch sides and be with the nutless left.”
No mistake
Trump later defended the handling of the video, which was created by the same person who produced an AI-generated video posted on the president’s Truth Social site in October that showed him piloting a fighter jet and dropping excrement on protesters.
“I didn’t make a mistake. I mean, I look at a lot of — thousands of things,” the president told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One. “And I looked at the beginning of it, it was fine.” Asked if he condemned the racist portion of the video, Trump said, “Of course I do.”