This One Speaks for Itself, etc.

Susan Estrich
Fri, 06 Feb 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

Why would the President of the United States post a video of former President Barack Obama and the former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys?

Writing on X, Senator Tim Scott, who chairs the Republican Senate Campaign Committee and is an ardent Trump defender, reposted it, "Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The president should remove it."

He didn't. The White House acknowledged that the president posted it. Karoline Leavitt stated: "This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public."
Updated: Sat Feb 07, 2026

Why would the President of the United States post a video of former President Barack Obama and the former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys?

Writing on X, Senator Tim Scott, who chairs the Republican Senate Campaign Committee and is an ardent Trump defender, reposted it, "Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The president should remove it."

He didn't. The White House acknowledged that the president posted it. Karoline Leavitt stated: "This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public."

It's the lead on the Drudge Report. Fake outrage?

Not from me. Mine's for real. It's no way for a current president to treat a former one, no way indeed to treat the only Black president in our history, no set of circumstances in which, as Senator Scott rightly recognized, such an image wouldn't be seen as smacking of racism.

Does Donald Trump really find racism funny?

Is this part of the latest effort to shrink the MAGA movement to its white supremacist base? If you lose Tim Scott, who's left?

Trump isn't just an overgrown kid with an addiction to the screen. He sets the tone for a nation. When the president becomes the Bully in Chief, with no limits of civility and the ready defense that his critics lack a sense of humor, then every parent in America who is trying to teach their kids the meaning of civility and respect is the loser.

When he posts a racist meme out of context, what message does that send?

And why is he sending it?

In other news, in what The Wall Street Journal calls "the latest step by the government to strip immigrants of due process rights so they can be deported more quickly," the Trump administration is moving to take away immigrants' rights to appeal their deportation decisions. Under the new rules, which are to take effect next month, immigrants will be given 10 days, rather than the current 30 days, to appeal a deportation order. Their appeals will be automatically dismissed after 15 days unless a majority of immigration appeals judges, who the Trump administration handpicks, vote to hear them. And they call that justice?

That's the thing about immigration judges. They aren't like federal judges, appointed for life and thus, in theory, independent. Immigration judges serve at the will of their employers in the Justice Department. They work for Pam Bondi. They can be dismissed for not doing the administration's bidding.

They are currently drastically short-handed and backlogged, a situation only made worse by the firing of around 100 immigration judges last year because they were seen as overly permissive in accepting claims. This month, the administration announced that it will close the immigration court in San Francisco, after slashing the number of judges there last year from 21 to four. To compensate for the judges they cut, the administration has proposed that up to 600 military lawyers serve as temporary immigration judges, a step that pushes the war analogy on to immigrants further than it should go. Immigration law is not governed by military law.

Clearly, we need more immigration judges, but contrary to the reasoning of the Department of Homeland Security, administrative warrants issued by immigration judges are no substitute for the judicial warrants required by the Fourth Amendment.