Donald Trump Retweets Supporter Shouting 'White Power'

On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump retweeted a video where one of his supporters shouted "White power!" at the camera. The post stayed live for several hours before the president finally deleted it. Many critics took it as an endorsement of the racist ideology.

Trump retweeted a two-minute video from Florida, where some of his supporters drove by a long line of anti-Trump protesters in a golf cart. As they whizzed by, protesters shouted "racist!" at the Trump supporters. A man with a Trump 2020 sign on his golf cart shouted the inflammatory slogan back, pumping his fist in the air. Critics doubted that the president missed this slogan, and guessed that he retweeted it anyway.

Seniors from The Villages in Florida protesting against each other: pic.twitter.com/Q3GRJCTjEW

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 27, 2020

"Thank you to the great people of The Villages," Trump wrote in the now-deleted tweet. "The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats Will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!"

The Villages are a retirement community outside of Orlando, Florida, where Trump has found a lot of support. According to a report by Villages-News.com, the video was initially recorded there on June 14, during a golf cart rally staged by a group called Villagers for Trump. The people protesting were actually the counter-protesters in this situation.

"Emotions ran raw, insults were hurled back and forth at least one fight almost broke out between Republicans and Democrats," the outlet wrote at the time.

The post that Trump retweeted came from an anonymous Twitter account used mostly for memes. It already had about 19,000 retweets when Trump himself came across it, though viewers were split over whose side they were on. Even the anonymous account that posted the video had Black fist emojis in its bio and the typically anti-Trump hashtag "RESIST."

Even some of his usual Republican supporters condemned Trump for retweeting this video. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina appeared on CNN on Sunday, saying: "[Trump] should not have retweeted and he should just take it down. It is indefensible."

Critics came down even harder, with many now directly referring to the president as "a racist." Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu of California was among them, tweeting: "The President is a racist. has made multiple racist statements and taken racist actions. Many Independents, Democrats and some Republicans who supported Trump in 2016 no longer support him. If you continue to support [Trump], what does that say about you?"