President Donald Trump wanted to thank his supporters Sunday morning, and did so by retweeting a video that included one of them shouting “white power.” Trump expressed his thanks to “the great people of The Villages,” a community in Florida, where supporters of the president apparently held a golf cart parade in his honor and verbally clashed with protesters who lined up on their route. The first bit of the video shows protesters yelling “racist” at a couple driving in a golf cart with “Trump 2020” and “America First” signs. The man driving the golf cart gives a thumbs-up and yells back, “White power!” The man protesting seems to see that as a recognition that his racist label is accurate: “There you go, white power.”
The video also includes other clips, apparently of the same pro-Trump golf cart parade in which protesters and supporters of the president yelled slurs and insults at one another. In one clip, for example, a woman yells, “Nazi, racist pig” at Trump supporters. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar was asked about the video and the president’s retweet on Sunday morning. “I’ve not seen that video or that tweet, but obviously neither the president, his administration, nor I would do anything to be supportive of white supremacy or anything that would support discrimination of any kind,” Azar said on CNN’s State of the Union.
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Trump retweeting the video and praising his supporters comes amid reports that the president’s allies have been calling on him to tone down his rhetoric at a time when his poll numbers appear to be plummeting. So far, though, the president hasn’t seemed too eager to take the advice and instead has apparently chosen to focus on appealing to his base.
Update, June 28, 2020, at 12:50 p.m.: President Donald Trump deleted the tweet about three hours after posting it. This is the video Trump had retweeted while writing, “Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!” White House spokesperson Judd Deere issued a statement that said: “President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”
