When confronted with criticism, Trump does not respond with restraint or humility. He responds with provocation, grievance, and racial dehumanization. His latest act crossed an unforgivable line.
On the night of February 5, 2026, President Donald Trump used his social media platform to circulate a grotesque video that ended by depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as primates. The image invoked one of the oldest and most dehumanizing racist tropes in American history. Its meaning was unmistakable. Coming from a sitting president, it represented a moral breach that demanded immediate repudiation. Instead, when questioned the following morning, Trump said he had reviewed the post but not in its entirety and deemed it acceptable. If true, that explanation suggests negligence unworthy of the office. If untrue, it suggests something worse. The public is deserving to know who prepared the post, and why was it allowed to remain online for twelve hours? Why did no senior aide accept responsibility for a mistake that, in any functioning administration, would end a career? The absence of accountability speaks for itself.
Many Republicans will insist they are not racist, and many sincerely believe it.
Only after sustained public backlash was the post removed. Trump then reversed course, he strongly condemned the image, claimed once again he had not seen the offensive ending, blamed his staff, and still offered no apology. Delay, deflection, and evasion remain his standard responses to moral failure. This episode fits a long-established pattern. When confronted with criticism, Trump does not respond with restraint or humility. He responds with provocation, grievance, and racial dehumanization.
Many Republicans will insist they are not racist, and many sincerely believe it. Yet millions continue to support the most racially divisive president in modern American history. They excuse the language, minimize the imagery, and rationalize the behavior as strategy or humor. Racism does not require confession. It survives through tolerance, advances through silence, and hardens through justification.
For more than six decades, the United States has struggled toward a broader understanding of equality. Progress has been uneven but real. Through law, protest, and sacrifice, Americans learned that citizenship is not defined by skin color, humanity is not assigned by race, and dignity is not granted by power. That understanding was meant to prevent leaders from reviving the language of dehumanization drawn from the nation’s darkest chapters.
Trump’s record on race long predates his presidency. His father was accused by the federal government of discriminatory housing practices, and Trump carried that legacy forward. In 1989, he purchased full-page newspaper advertisements calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, five Black and Latino teenagers later proven innocent. Even after their exoneration, he refused to acknowledge the injustice. He later promoted the false claim that the nation’s first Black president was not a legitimate American, described immigrants from nonwhite countries in degrading terms, amplified white nationalist voices, and told elected officials of color to go back where they came from. These were not isolated incidents but a consistent narrative of exclusion and resentment.
Anti-Black racism carried a uniquely dehumanizing weight rooted in American history.
That narrative intensified during his first term and beyond. Racism became a political instrument, used to energize supporters and define enemies. Trump did not merely tolerate racist language. He normalized it and placed it at the center of his political identity. His staffing decisions reinforced that message. Senior positions were filled for loyalty rather than competence. Officials of color who asserted independence were sidelined or dismissed. Expertise was treated as disloyalty, integrity as opposition, and public service as expendable. Immigrants and refugees were targeted with particular cruelty, and enforcement favored spectacle over justice. Yet anti-Black racism carried a uniquely dehumanizing weight rooted in American history. The primate image aimed at the Obamas drew directly from that lineage. It was not careless. It was calculated. At moments of national testing, leaders are judged less by what they provoke than by what they refuse to do. Trump refuses restraint, decency, and accountability. He chooses cruelty over character and division over duty. This should be the breaking point for Republicans and for Christians who have persuaded themselves that policy outcomes excuse conduct. Faith that tolerates dehumanization is faith emptied of meaning. Patriotism that excuses racism is patriotism stripped of honor. Silence in the face of bigotry is not neutrality. It is permission. The choice before voters is neither partisan nor abstract. You do not have to abandon conservatism to reject racism. You do not have to embrace every Democratic position to defend democracy. In 2026 and again in 2028, Americans must choose decency over degradation, conscience over comfort, and the rule of law over cult loyalty. History will record who answered that call and who looked away.
About the author ~
Van Abbott is a long time resident of Alaska and California. He has held financial management positions in government and private organizations in California, Kansas, and Alaska. He is retired and writes Op-Eds as a hobby. He served in the Peace Corps in the late sixties. You can find more of his commentaries and comments on life in America on Substack.
