Donald Trump has deleted a tweet he sent featuring video of a Trump supporter shouting, “White power! White power!” after an outpouring of grief and outrage at racist language flowing directly from the White House once again.
The tweet was deleted after it drew fierce criticism from across the political spectrum, including from Tim Scott of South Carolina, the sole African American Republican in the Senate.
“There’s no question that he should not have retweeted it and he should just take it down,” Scott told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
“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.”
Trump had left the tweet, featuring video of arguments among residents of The Villages, a predominantly white and conservative retirement community in Florida, posted on his Twitter feed for nearly four hours.
“Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” Trump tweeted about the footage, which begins with a white man driving a golf cart with a “Trump 2020” sign spouting racist rhetoric at white anti-Trump protesters.
White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere claimed that Trump had not heard the man screaming “white power” at the start of the video he tweeted.
“President Trump is a big fan of The Villages,” Deere said in the statement. “He did not hear the one statement made on the video.”
Cody Keenan, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama, said the tweet was part of Trump’s re-election strategy.
