Republicans Suddenly Shocked by Trump Racism After Ape Obamas Video

Republicans suddenly seemed shocked that President Trump is capable of racism after he posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes Thursday night. 

On Friday morning, longest-serving Black Senator Tim Scott called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House”—spurring other GOP senators and representatives to miraculously realize that Trump’s post was indeed racist. 

Representative Mike Lawler, who represents a swing district in New York, called out the president shortly thereafter, saying on X, “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive—whether intentional or a mistake—and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

After Trump took down the video, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, whose Pennsylvania district voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, posted, “Racism and hatred have no place in our country—ever. They divide our people and weaken the foundations of our democracy.

“Whether intentional or careless, this post is a grave failure of judgment and is absolutely unacceptable from anyone—most especially from the President of the United States. A clear and unequivocal apology is owed,” Fitzpatrick added. 

Representative Jeff Van Drew too waited until after Trump deleted the video and said, “I condemn racism in any form.”

“These types of videos are morally wrong. Sadly, this kind of behavior happens on both sides of the aisle, and it needs to stop,” Van Drew posted on X Friday afternoon, without mentioning Trump by name. “We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard.” 

Representative Mike Turner also waited until Trump deleted the video, posting that he “didn’t feel the need to respond to every inflammatory statement made by the White House. However, the release of racist images of former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama is offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable. President Trump should apologize.”

In the Senate, a few Republicans were willing to speak out.  

Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska posted, “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.”

Roger Wicker of Mississippi called the video “totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize.”

Senator Susan Collins, who is facing a tough reelection campaign in Maine, piggybacked on Scott’s post, saying, “Tim is right. This was appalling.”

None of these posts demonstrate any real political courage, with most coming after the video was taken down. Trump has yet to comment on his post, and after his press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially tried to downplay the video, his staff later tried to claim one of them posted it without the president’s knowledge. The apology many of these members of Congress are supposedly demanding won’t come—not that any of these politicians were likely to hold Trump accountable anyway. 

The U.S. Marshals Service is defending a federal agent after a video of him violently kicking a small dog made waves on Friday morning.

The agent, part of the Memphis Safe Task Force that the Trump administration unleashed on the city last summer, can be seen in the video kicking the dog after it runs up barking at the agents’ K-9.

The dog is tiny, harmless, and really not doing anything to stop the agents from doing their jobs. Nevertheless, the U.S. Marshals played the victim.

“A woman at the apartment complex recorded the incident on her cell phone and posted the video to social media. While the appearance of the incident is unfortunate, the deputy marshal’s action was not done with malice,” they wrote in a statement. “It was a last-resort, split-second action taken by a law enforcement officer to control the environment and mitigate a dangerous situation. An uncontrolled, aggressive animal can hinder official duties and threaten safety.”

Under Donald Trump’s administration, the National Institutes of Health have slashed more than half a billion dollars in medical research on some of the leading causes of death in America.

A report published Friday by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, found that the NIH had gutted $561 million in funding for research on cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Despite research on these illnesses being fully funded by Congress, the Trump administration has chosen to terminate at least 320 grants mid-study and abandon thousands of patients across 304 clinical trials, including 69 trials for children. In addition to destroying years of work, the Trump administration’s actions have prompted an entire generation of medical researchers to question the viability of building a career in the United States.

So, how did the NIH decide what to cut? “The criteria for these decisions are not scientific. They are political,” the report stated.

Interviews with staff revealed that the NIH used a list of banned words to determine which research projects deserved extra scrutiny, including terms such as “COVID,” “climate change,” “diversity,” “disadvantaged backgrounds,” as well as multiple terms for Black men and women.

It’s worth breaking down what exactly losing that half a billion dollars detailed in the report has cost Americans.

The report found that the NIH has terminated or frozen 116 cancer research grants totaling $273 million. Included in that total was $20 million for the Duke Specialized Program of Research Excellence in Brain Cancer in North Carolina, where researchers investigated the leading cause of cancer deaths for children under 15.

The NIH has also terminated or frozen 65 Alzheimer’s research grants totaling $94 million, upending years-long research studies that were finally beginning to yield new drugs and diagnostic tools.

Additionally, the organization halted funding for 14 of the 35 NIH-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers, totaling approximately $65 million. The agency also canceled meetings of the National Advisory Council on Aging, delaying the disbursement of an estimated $600 million in grants. After years of bipartisan investment, the Trump administration cut the number of new Alzheimer’s research projects by nearly one-third in a single year, according to the report.

Despite Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade to “Make Americans Healthy Again” by flipping the food pyramid upside down, the NIH actively gutted research into diabetes by $83 million and heart disease by $111 million.

Nicholas Tartaglione, a mass murderer and the former cellmate of Jeffrey Epstein, is claiming that the Trump administration wanted the sexual predator dead. 

In a pardon petition filed last summer and obtained by The Daily Beast, Tartaglione claimed that Epstein was placed in harm’s way on purpose, so that he would die before being able to testify in court and incriminate any of the wealthy elites who abused young girls with him.

“It is no coincidence that prior to trial I was transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan and deliberately placed in the same cell as Jeffrey Epstein,” he wrote. “I clearly was not protected on purpose, nor was Epstein. I truly believe that the government wanted both Epstein and me dead.” 

The “government” would have been that of President Trump in 2019—an interesting claim given that it’s Trump from whom Tartaglione is requesting this pardon.  

Tartaglione and Epstein had a strange relationship, as the latter accused Tartaglione of trying to kill him three weeks before he was found dead. Tartaglione denies the accusation, and says he even saved Epstein when he had a “piece of string” around his neck. 

Tartaglione’s claim only adds more fuel to the fire of speculation surrounding the Epstein files and the elite cabal of abusers held within them. The White House dismissed reports of Tartaglione’s letter, writing “Anyone is able to submit a pardon request—much like everything else the Daily Beast writes, no one should take their garbage seriously.”

Tulsi Gabbard’s presence at an FBI raid in Fulton County, Georgia, last week has led to some finger-pointing within the Trump administration.

On Thursday, President Trump was asked why Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was at the raid in which ballots from the 2020 election were seized. He responded by blaming Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying that Gabbard “took a lot of heat ... because she went in at Pam’s insistence ... and she looked at votes.”

“They say, ‘Why is she doing it?’” Trump said. “Because Pam wanted her to do it.”

On Friday at a press conference, Bondi failed to set the record straight when a reporter asked her about Trump’s assertion.

“DNI Gabbard was down in Atlanta last week for the Fulton County search. Originally, this office said that she was not part of the investigation. She put in a letter to Congress that President Trump directed her to do so, and then now President Trump yesterday said that it was at your insistence that she went down there. So what is the case here?” the reporter asked.

Bondi responded that she and Gabbard are “inseparable,” along with others who were at the press conference Friday (which included FBI Director Kash Patel and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro).

“She was down there with Deputy Director Andrew Bailey of the FBI,” Bondi said, referring to Gabbard. “I’m not going to talk about any other details of that matter right now because Georgia is a very important issue to us. She was there, we’re inseparable, that’s all I’ll say.”

It looks like Bondi is trying to protect herself, avoid contradicting Trump, and cover for Gabbard at the same time. It’s very irregular for Gabbard, whose job is supposed to focus on foreign intelligence, to be involved in an investigation over supposed 2020 election fraud in Georgia (which was disproven in court long ago). Trump himself is unusually close to the investigation, discussing the Fulton County raid with Gabbard and FBI officials who were present. What is actually going on, and what is the end goal?