President Trump promoted a video Sunday that includes a Trump supporter saying “white power” while facing off with counterprotesters, calling his supporters at the Florida retirement community where the demonstration occurred “great people.”
The tweet of the video has since been removed.
The video of a pro-Trump golf cart parade in the Villages, a retirement community in central Florida, includes counterprotesters calling the president a bigot. The video shows Trump supporters and opponents facing off in screaming matches filled with expletives and insults.
“Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!” Trump tweeted, as he shared the video that opens with an elderly white man in a golf cart decorated with Trump signs being heckled by a counterprotester who asks “where’s your white hood?” The man responds by twice saying “white power” as a woman beside him chants “Trump! Trump!”
The tweet was up for at least 90 minutes. It was removed some time before 11:30 a.m. Asked about the tweet, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said “President Trump is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”
On Sunday morning Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican senator, called on the president to take down his tweet.
“There’s no question: He should not have retweeted it; he should just take it down,” Scott said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Asked if he was offended by Trump’s tweet, he responded: “We could play politics with it, or we can’t – I’m not going to.”
“I think it’s indefensible, we should take it down,” he added.
The “great people” language recalls Trump’s description of some who attended a 2017 white-supremacist march in Charlottesville as “very fine people.” Some of the counterprotesters in the Florida video hold signs supporting former vice president Joe Biden, the presumed Democratic nominee challenging Trump in November.
Trump’s tweet suggested he may soon hold a campaign rally in Florida.
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