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Politics

Trump retweets, then deletes, 'white power' video

June 28, 2020

The US president shared a video that portrayed a man in Florida chanting a white supremacist phrase. The tweet was later removed, with a White House spokesman claiming Trump didn't hear "the one statement."

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Donald Trump at a rally in Tulsa
Image: Getty Images/AFP/W. McNamee

US President Donald Trump drew outrage on Sunday after he retweeted a video in which one of his supporters chanted "white power" at a group of protesters in Florida.

The video portrayed protesters and Trump supporters shouting profanities at each other in The Villages retirement community in central Florida.

In the video, a man riding a golf cart raised his fist and repeatedly chanted "white power," a phrase often used by white supremacists.

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"Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall," Trump wrote above the original tweet containing the video.

"Corrupt Joe is Shot. See you soon!!!" Trump's tweet continued, referring to former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Trump later deleted the tweet sharing the video. White House spokesman Judd Deere said the US leader "did not hear the one statement made on the video."

Read more: Trump ouster will not heal US ties, says Germany's Maas

Trump's tweet was widely condemned, including by members of his Republican Party.

"It was so profanity-laced. The entire thing was offensive. Certainly, the comment about the white power was offensive," Tim Scott, a Republican US Senator from South Carolina, said on American TV station CNN. "It's indefensible. We should take it down."

Trump has been accused of worsening racial tensions in the US during his presidency. Those accusations escalated during recent Black Lives Matter protests that have arisen across the country after the police killing of George Floyd.

dv/mm (AP, dpa, Reuters)