Analysis
Trump’s
toxic, racist video surpasses previous levels of debasement
Robert
Tait
in
Washington
Video
deleted by White House breaks through numbness barrier and raises further
questions about fitness for office
Fri 6 Feb
2026 16.00 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/06/trump-obama-video-racist
It is a
singular if highly dubious distinction of Donald Trump’s pungent contribution
to the political discourse to have essentially bankrupted the English
language’s capacity for outrage.
So
unremitting and extreme have been the avalanche of affronts since Trump
descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to declare his
presidential candidacy that even his most ardent critics have become
desensitized, leading to a level of shock fatigue.
Yet
Trump’s highly racist and offensive late-night Truth Social post depicting
Barack and Michelle Obama as apes broke through the numbness barrier to
register on the political Richter scale at a level few of his many previous
insults ever achieved.
That
Trump succeeded in surpassing his own previous levels of debased standards was
only emphasized by the decision, taken under fire, to delete the post hours
after the White House had initially defended it.
That rare
climbdown and the attempts to pin the blame on an anonymous White House staffer
are unlikely to prevent the episode from illuminating a topic that much of the
media has seemed reluctant to confront head on; that Trump’s behavior, online
and in public, has been growing more reckless and raises serious questions
about his mental acuity and his fitness for office.
On social
media, whisperings that Trump is displaying signs of cognitive decline have
increased in recent weeks.
Such
chatter has been fed, rather than silenced, by the president’s frequent
invocations of multiple cognitive examinations that he claims to have “aced” –
boasts that have merely triggered questions as to why he is undergoing such
tests in the first place.
Providing
further grist have been the increasing volume of nocturnal social media posts
from a president who appear frequently unrestrained and frantic, even if
falling short of the racist toxicity of the Obama video.
On
several nights in the past two months, Trump has fired off scores of social
media posts in the night hours, including vitriolic attacks on his opponents.
On one night in December, he fired off more than 150 posts in a few hours.
At the
same time, the president has been observed apparently falling asleep in cabinet
meetings and other public forums.
Against
that backdrop, Friday’s initial rebuke from the White House press secretary,
Karoline Leavitt, to reporters to “stop the fake outrage and report on
something today that actually matters to the American public” missed the point
by a wide margin – as the later reversal only confirmed.
Critics
may feel entitled to respond that such advice might be better directed to
Trump, as polls show rising disapproval over his administration’s performance
on affordability issues and the violent actions of ICE agents in Minneapolis
and elsewhere.
More
sentient – and ominous for Trump – was the response of the South Carolina
Republican senator, Tim Scott, who is Black, and usually one of the president’s
most reliable allies. Calling the post “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of
this White House”, Scott wrote: “The president should remove it.”
Given
Trump’s known trait for doubling down – a lesson absorbed from his pugilistic
mentor, Roy Cohn – the fact that he did just that represents an unlikely
display of weakness, if not exactly contrition.
Yet it is
unlikely to be a template for future conduct.
More
probable are further indiscretions that could lead to increased calls for
invoking the 25th amendment, a constitutional device with provisions for
removing a president from office if he is deemed unable to perform his duties.
Indeed,
the Obama post may have already crossed that threshold, given the US’s painful
history of racism and the human costs borne in trying to overcome them.
Invoking
the amendment’s section 4 – needed to remove a president – would be complicated
and seems a far-fetched possibility.
It would
need the vice-president, JD Vance, and a majority of the cabinet to declare
Trump unfit, a hard-to-imagine scenario considering the obsequious displays of
fealty the president demands of cabinet members. Even if that hurdle were to be
overcome, support from two-thirds of both the houses of Congress would be
required if Trump were to contest an effort to remove him – as seems likely.
And to
Democrats, comparisons with Joe Biden may be jarring.
Speculation
about Biden’s supposed cognitive decline increased during the last year of his
presidency, although evidence was limited as his White House handlers sought to
cocoon him and restrict his public appearances.
It was
only after the president’s disastrous televised debate with Trump in Atlanta in
June 2024, when he seemed lost and unable to complete cogent thoughts, that
doubts about his ability to serve as president for another four years reached
boiling point – ultimately forcing him to withdraw his candidacy in favor of
Kamala Harris.
But at no
point did Biden issue racist or insulting social media posts, or appear to
threaten Nato allies, as Trump has done over Greenland. Nor did he demonize
entire ethnic groups, something Trump has done repeatedly in calling the Somali
community in Minnesota “garbage”.
He did
not assail female journalists in press briefings in nakedly vindictive and
misogynistic tones, as Trump has done several times lately.
Racially
abusing his Democratic predecessor on Truth Social may be an insufficient
catalyst to trigger Republicans into immediate thoughts of removing a president
they have bent over backwards to submit to and accommodate.
But some
may be beginning to wonder how much longer they can trust what Lyndon Johnson
called “the awesome duties” of being president to a man who spends his twilight
hours posting memes that threaten to reopen wounds which the country spent
generations and much treasure trying to heal.
