Trump 2.0’s Most Racist Moments, Ranked

The Obamas-as-apes video is the latest in a long line of racist acts and statements from this administration.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

AFTER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP POSTED a video on Thursday depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes, a few Republicans joined in the widespread criticism of the post’s racism and urged its deletion. Among the first Republicans to call it out was Sen. Tim Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and one of only a handful of black Republicans in Congress. In a tweet on Friday morning, Scott said he was “praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”

Which raises a question: If this post was the most racist thing Scott has seen from this White House, what were the other racist things in contention for that title? It turns out there’s a fair bit from which to choose in that category. Here’s a top ten list of racist words and deeds from Trump and his administration since his return to office in January 2025.

10. Vice President JD Vance saying it’s “totally reasonable and acceptable” for Americans to not want to live next to people who speak a different language or come from “a totally different culture.”

If these remarks, which Vance made in an October 2025 interview with the New York Post, remind you of the arguments behind Jim Crow–era segregation and redlining, well . . . same. Talking about how neighborhoods change when “twenty people move into a three-bedroom house,” Vance let slip a patently racist view of immigrants and the value they bring to the country and individual neighborhoods. We counter that Vance himself would make a pretty bad neighbor. The terribly awkward small talk alone would be too much.

9. Greg Bovino, then-commander-at-large of the U.S. Border Patrol, saying his agents choose the people to arrest based partly on “how they look.”

Points, at least, for honesty. Back in September 2025—months before Bovino was reportedly demoted following the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis—he made clear how he was going about arresting people, telling a WBEZ reporter that his agents were doing so based on “how they look.” Well, wouldn’t you know: That’s led to countless examples of Hispanic American citizens being harassed and wrongfully detained during ICE and Border Patrol operations, based basically on the color of their skin. Not great, Bob.

8. Rallying around a DOGE staffer fired for racist posts.

There’s been a pattern in this administration: White man makes racist comments → loses his job → Trump finds out and rehires him. In this case, it was Marko Elez, a then-25-year-old DOGE employee who said in social media posts “you could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” that he would like to “normalize Indian hate,” that he “was racist before it was cool,” and that he “just want[s] a eugenic immigration policy.” Elez resigned after the bigotry came to light in February 2025. But Trump, Vance, and DOGEmeister Elon Musk jumped to Elez’s defense and hired him back. Musk’s tweet after the episode—“To err is human, to forgive divine”—is a fine philosophy for individual behavior, but when it comes to staffing the federal government, it’s a recipe for irresponsibility and unaccountability.

7. Vance dismissing outrage at a Young Republicans group chat in which participants called black people monkeys and “watermelon people.”

For most people, seeing a text from someone saying they “love Hitler,” or that they’d “go to the zoo” if they “wanted to watch monkey play ball,” would probably make you think less of the sender. And if that didn’t do the trick, perhaps the text where they threatened to send people to the “gas chambers” would. But when Politico revealed in October 2025 that a Young Republicans group was sending these very messages, the vice president called the subsequent outrage “BS” and “pearl clutching.”

6. Trump cutting admissions for refugees from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but making an exception for white Afrikaners from South Africa.

It’s hard to find a clearer example of how race permeates many facets of Trump’s policies, including international relations. Trump’s fixation on how white South Africans are treated by their own government—a fixation that dates back at least to 2018—was turned into policy in his second term. In a memo he issued just after his second inauguration, Trump announced that “it is the policy of the United States . . . to admit only those refugees who can fully and appropriately assimilate into the United States.” A few weeks later, Trump announced that Afrikaners would be granted refugee status, and by May 2025, his administration was rolling out the red carpet for the first Afrikaners classified as refugees to arrive in the United States. Nonwhite populations fleeing war and famine, though, can no longer count on the U.S. refugee program for help: In October 2025, the administration set the lowest refugee admissions cap on record, at just 7,500, and announced that most of those spots would go to Afrikaners.

5. Trump nominating Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel.

Follow these steps and see if you can spot the racism:

1. Trump chose Ingrassia, who had been working as a White House staffer, to head a key watchdog agency despite lacking relevant experience.

2. Politico published texts from Ingrassia saying Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and that he has “a Nazi streak.”

3. Senators spoke out against Ingrassia and said his nomination wouldn’t pass.

4. Trump pulled the nomination—but rather than toss Ingrassia aside, Trump made him the deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration, a job that does not require Senate confirmation. (As of this writing, he has been bumped up to the role of acting general counsel.)

For anyone claiming Trump doesn’t surround himself with racists, go back to point 1.

4. Trump sharing a video of Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero while an AI-generated Chuck Schumer talks about illegal immigrants voting.

I mean, c’mon. This September 2025 video looks like something a tenth-grader made on a laptop in the back of a classroom. Except they probably wouldn’t be quite so racist. Unlike the Obamas-as-apes video, the White House revelled in this one—mocking those who criticized them. When you consider when this was posted—on the verge of a government shutdown and in place of a serious policy debate—it really gives you some insight into how this administration views certain ethnic groups and politics in general.

3. Trump disparaging Ilhan Omar and Somali Americans.

Trump’s bigoted references to Somalia-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) go back years—to his first term, when she was one of several female members of Congress he said should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” He echoed that language in December 2025: “I love this Ilhan Omar, whatever the hell her name is, with the little…the little turban. I love her. She comes in, does nothing but bitch. . . . I love it. She comes to our country and she’s always complaining. . . . She should get the hell out, throw her the hell out”—despite her American citizenship. And confirming that he had (as was reported via leaks in 2018) used the term “shithole” to describe some countries in his first term, he said that Somalia is such a country, and called it “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime” and its people “garbage.”

2. Trump blaming Reagan National Airport plane crash on DEI hiring standards.

Where some presidents try to comfort a mourning nation after tragedy, Trump opened his second term with a flatly racist rant. This notches our silver-medal spot for its sheer baselessness—he falsely said, among other things, that FAA DEI policies meant that people with “severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities” could “be air traffic controllers”—plus the special type of cruelty it takes to politicize sixty-seven deaths. It’s worth noting that when asked how he could conclude, even before an investigation took place, that DEI hiring practices caused the crash, Trump said: “Because I have common sense.” (Talk about baseless claims.)

1. Trump sharing a video depicting the Obamas as apes.

Okay, yeah, Tim Scott is right: We give this one the top rating. Reposting a video that puts the faces of the first black president and first lady on the bodies of apes is old-fashioned racism. At first, the president’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, claimed it was just a Lion King meme—but there are no apes in The Lion King. They then shifted to claiming that an unnamed staffer erroneously reposted it. But that just raises a host of other questions. Why are they employing a racist staffer? Is that person still employed? And why is a staffer allowed to post directly to the president’s main social media account at all hours of the night? The post was eventually taken down, but Trump did not apologize, and insists he has no reason to do so: “No,” he told reporters on Air Force One, “I didn’t make a mistake.”

What’s missing from this top-ten list? What did we leave off that you would have included? Let us know in the comments.