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New polling demonstrates that Americans, by a two-to-one margin, think President Donald Trump is a racist.
The polling comes just weeks after Trump re-posted a video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes — a centuries-old racist trope against Black people — on his personal Truth Social account.
An Economist/YouGov poll published Tuesday included a question on whether Americans view Trump as racist. According to the survey, 47 percent said they believe the term does describe the president, with only 24 percent saying it doesn’t. Twenty-nine percent said they had no opinion on the matter.
Some observers of the poll noted that Republican-leaning voters made up the plurality of the “no opinion” responses, perhaps out of a refusal to admit the truth about the president. Among respondents who self-identified as Republicans, 41 percent said they didn’t have an opinion on whether Trump was racist.
The poll is comparable with how Americans viewed Trump in January 2018, when the Economist/YouGov poll asked the same question. At that time, 44 percent viewed Trump as racist, while 40 percent said he wasn’t one. Fewer people are now willing to defend the president against accusations of racism.
The racist video was shared on Trump’s profile on February 5. The following day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt mocked reporters who asked questions about it, describing criticism as “fake outrage.” Hours later, when members of the Republican Party began to level criticism against the president, the White House announced that the video had been removed, claiming that it had been posted by an unnamed staffer.
Trump also tried to put the blame on the unnamed staffer, claiming he had seen the beginning of the video and approved its posting but hadn’t seen the end of it.
“I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” Trump said, asserting “nobody knew” that racist imagery was included in the video.
Trump also refused to take responsibility for the posting of the video or for failing to have it fully vetted by his staff or himself.
“I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.
Late last week, Trump continued to downplay the controversy. Asked by reporters if the staffer who had supposedly posted it on his behalf had been disciplined, the president indicated they had not.
Some critics have expressed doubts over the official explanation from the White House, particularly since the posting happened in the middle of the night, a time Trump is known to frequently use his accounts.
In 2017, White House press secretary Sean Spicer declared that posts on Trump’s social media accounts are meant to be viewed as “official statements.”.
Former President Barack Obama recently weighed in on the current president’s sharing of the racist video. In an interview with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama said the video was concerning, and that many Americans “find this behavior deeply troubling.”
The former president also alluded to a double standard, noting that when he was president, conservatives were often quick to criticize him for being “unpresidential” for superficial and inconsequential infractions.
“There doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office,” Obama said.
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