The Lyin King

The President of the United States posted a racist video depicting the Obamas as monkeys in what seemed to be an AI-generated parody of The Lion King. After first defending the video (“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public”), the White House eventually removed the video. The news here is not Trump’s toddler on cocaine-like lack of social media impulse control. Nor is it his overt racism. That, after all, is his most consistent trait, spanning time (his opening salvo in his first successful presidential run centered on birtherism) and geography (from the masked thugs patrolling the streets of Minneapolis to the funding cuts robbing black and brown kids of food and medicine in “sh-thole” countries). The combination of these personality defects means that one can hardly be surprised that another day brought us yet another adult diaper-full of rancid, racist, social media bile spewed across the internet. What’s notable here is that, at least this once, the media didn’t sugar coat the reality of the story (it was racism, period), even some of Trump’s ardent enablers didn’t try to write off the racism as just Donald being Donald (South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” which is really saying something), and that the White House, at long last, finally deleted something instead of defending it. No one expects this to teach the president, his defenders, or his social media team a lasting lesson, and we’re not bracing ourselves for a return of dignity to the Oval Office. But at least when it comes to this one incident and this one moment in time, the lyin sleeps tonight.