Trump’s racist video of the Obamas shows his true colors | Opinion

I want to thank all of you who expressed outrage at President Donald Trump’s latest attack on former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michele Obama, whom he portrayed as apes in a video posted by the White House.

It seems the president is obsessed with the Obamas. With all the work he has in running the country, it puzzles me that he still finds the time to be insulting to, not only the Obamas, but to anyone he is threatened by. That includes strong women, especially women of color, and anyone else who doesn’t bow to him. Living with himself must be terribly hard. But then, maybe not.

Mr. Trump’s action toward the Obamas is not just another racial attack. It is a blatant effort to turn America around, to stop our progress, of moving forward and becoming the all-inclusive country we can be. (For the record, Trump claimed he “didn’t see” that part of the video, which contained claims about fraud in the 2020 election, according to news reports.)

Nonetheless, the Obama video is part of the Trump playbook of “making America great again,“ that is, erasing the history of African Americans and our contributions to America. It’s about changing the storyline of the progress we’ve made since slavery. It’s about turning back the clock.

The erase Black history campaign started in a not-so-subtle way — by destroying books that tell the history of Blacks in this country, by blotting out the works of great African-American authors, who dared to write down our history so it could be passed on from generation to generation of Americans of all races, creeds and colors.

Mr. Trump’s actions and his open hatred of people who look like the Obamas is an all-out attempt to erase us.

His meanness is so unchecked that he is even attempting to overhaul the White House. I don’t think it will stop at the new ballroom addition.

Mr. Trump’s actions have nothing to do with the way the nation’s home looks. I believe it is because somebody must have told him the White House was built by African Americans.

You say that’s a far-fetched idea? I don’t think so. Remember, this is the same president who replaced President Obama’s official portrait in the Grand Foyer of the White House to a painting of himself. He moved the Obama portrait to a private, restricted area of the White House. We must watch the not-so-subtle changes the president is making.

Funny thing about hate, though. It spreads.

While the president’s focus seems to be on eradicating African Americans and our contributions from America and its culture, his hate campaign doesn’t stop with African Americans. His long arm of hate is reaching out to Hispanic Americans and to our cherished monuments.

He knows, for example, what President Kennedy’s memory means to most Americans. So, what does Mr. Trump do? He stacks the Kennedy Center board with his political allies, who voted to rename the Kennedy Center to “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Folks, this is a serious time in our country. We don’t have time to fall asleep. Things are changing fast in America, and the changes are not always for the benefit of all Americans. So far, 2026 has been hard on integrity-loving and truth-seeking Americans who revere justice and freedom.

In January, we watched the videos in horror as ICE agents shot and killed two Minnesotans who were U.S. citizens — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, and dragged ChongLy Scott Thao, a Hmong immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, from his home in freezing weather wearing only boxer shorts and a blanket draped around his shoulders. He was later released and brought back home without an apology.

We watched as ICE used 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos as bait to grab his father, sending them both to a family detention center in Texas. It took a court order from a compassionate federal judge in Texas, Fred Biery, to get them released nearly two weeks later.

Oh, and let us not forget President Trump’s attack on Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, over his Super Bowl halftime show. The president took to Truth Social to diss the show, saying it was “absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!” concluding, “This ‘Show” is just a ‘slap in the face’ to our Country.”

No. It was the president’s remarks that were a slap in the face to every Hispanic American in the country. I guess that’s because the president is not aware that there are more than 45 million Spanish-speaking people in the United States, representing about 14% of the population. And if you include bilingual speakers, the numbers swell to nearly 59 million, making Spanish the most common non-English language in the country.

So yes, Mr. President, while you didn’t understand the language of Bad Bunny’s halftime show, millions of other people did and enjoyed it.

Laying aside the incidents in Minnesota, the attacks on the Obamas and the degrading of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, my question is this:

How was hate allowed to get this far in our culture? Why weren’t these unsavory tactics nipped in the bud? Why was Mr. Trump even allowed to become president of the greatest country in the world, when we knew who he was.

I don’t know about you, but I think like the late Maya Angelou, who noted, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Mr. Trump showed us, ya’ll.

Remember how he boastfully degraded women with his nasty description of women’s body parts. And how he said he could walk down New York’s Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and get away with it.

And how he spent millions of dollars on a “birther“ campaign, trying to prove that President Obama was not born in the United States.

And how he mocked a New York Times reporter with a disability and dishonored our veterans who fought valiantly in wars so that he, who never went to war, could continue to be free.

And how can we ever forget the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, the one Mr. Trump incited, the one where innocent people died and his own vice president’s s life was threatened because Mr. Trump couldn’t accept the fair election’s outcome.

Oh, there were so many red flags. But now that he is president of the greatest nation in the free world, he is showing us who he truly is.

Yet, through it all, I believe there is hope, even for Donald Trump. It’s called redemption. And it’s free.