WASHINGTON — President Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.
It came months after another post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.
The latest image shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a baby blue and white presidential plane with graffiti painted on it that included the Democrat’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” “Obama” and “BLM,” short for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows graffiti in Arabic on the plane that says the phrase “alhamdulillah,” which means “praise be to God” or “thank God.”
The use of graffiti is a coded message to remind people of crime and urban decay and has been used in racist messaging against Black people in the past.
Trump has a yearslong record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas, and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric. That includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and posts that have sparked anger on his Truth Social website.
The president’s post of the Obamas as primates came in February, during the first week of Black History Month. It was removed following widespread criticism from civil rights leaders and Republican senators. Trump refused to apologize, however, and a staffer was later blamed for making the post.
This time, the presidential plane is a sensitive topic since Trump last week took his maiden voyage on a new Air Force One — a retrofitted Boeing 747-800 worth $400 million gifted by Qatar. The aircraft’s trademark light blue hull that helped Air Force One blend into the sky was replaced with Trump’s preferred color scheme: a navy-blue belly with red and gold stripes.
After giving a speech on the National Mall in Washington to mark Independence Day and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on Saturday night, Trump had no public events Sunday and spent the day at his golf club in Virginia. He’s scheduled to leave Monday for Turkey to attend a summit with NATO allies.
The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Nor did a spokesperson for the Obamas.
Sunday’s post also followed one from last month when Trump shared an doctored image of Obama’s new presidential library in Chicago so that it looked like the building had a large bag of garbage on top and was surrounded by a wasteland. “The Obama Library ten years from now will be a ‘Mecca’ for those who hate America! President DJT,” he wrote then.
Trump has frequently criticized the Obama library in public comments, and he posted the library image twice on his social media platform.
The Air Force One image was part of a series of Sunday posts Trump made on Truth Social, including a past picture that appeared to show Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni grinning and gazing upward at Trump under the words “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.”
That, too, could touch off a new firestorm at this week’s meetings in Turkey, since Trump had suggested that Meloni asked “over and over” for a photo with him during the recent Group of Seven summit.
Trump’s comments prompted Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to cancel a subsequent, planned trip to Washington, while Meloni called Trump’s account “completely fabricated,” saying “Italy and I never beg.”
Weissert writes for the Associated Press.
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