White House staff couldn't reach Trump to take down racist 'white power' retweet for hours as he was golfing
White House officials reportedly could not reach President Donald Trump to make him delete his retweet of a video of one his supporters shouting "white power." His controversial retweet set off a "five-alarm fire" in the White House as officials scrambled to reach him while the president was relaxing at his golf course in Sterling, Virginia, and had put his phone down, two officials said. It reportedly took officials over three hours to contact the Republican leader.
Trump's Twitter account sparked a social media firestorm as critics denounced him for promoting a white supremacist message. The officials also attempted to reach deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino to ask him to delete the retweet but were unsuccessful, NBC News reported. According to the White House officials, once they were able to reach Trump, he agreed to delete the post. The pressure on Trump to delete the retweet increased after Republican Senator Tim Scott slammed the retweet as "indefensible" and demanded that the president delete it. Scott made the statement during an interview with CNN. "There's no question. He should not have retweeted and he should just take it down," the Republican senator said.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, on Monday, June 29, had stated that Trump watched the video before retweeting it, however, he did not hear his supporter say "white power." The video showed a man from a retirement community in Florida called the Villages driving a golf cart with Trump campaign posters and shouting "white power." The Republican leader retweeted the video, saying: "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!"
Shortly after the tweet was deleted, the White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere, in a statement, 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."
White House officials said that although Trump gets lots of content to share from aides and allies, the "white power" incident is a "lesson to all of us in the White House to be more aware of what’s out there." The Republican leader had previously talked about how he is eagle-eyed when it comes to his social media posts. Trump, in April, had received criticism for retweeting a post that had the hashtag #FireFauci. When reporters at the time had asked whether he noticed the hashtags, Trump had said: "Yeah, I notice everything."
While talking about Trump's controversial retweet, former national security adviser John Bolton, on CNN's State of the Union, said that there was a chance that Trump retweeted it after seeing a "Trump 2020" sign in it. "It may be that you can draw a conclusion that he heard it, and it was racist, and he tweeted it to promote the message. It is a legitimate conclusion to draw. It is also entirely legitimate to say he just had no idea what else was in the video other than the Trump sign," Bolton said.