The Daily Fuckup

A racist video appeared on Donald Trump’s social account on February 6 and was later removed after backlash spread. The clip depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. The White House first defended the post, then said a staffer had uploaded it in error.

The episode drew criticism from Democrats and, more unusually, from several Republicans as well. That made the reaction broader than the usual partisan split that follows Trump’s online provocations.

Trump later said he had only seen the beginning of the video and had not watched the whole thing before it was posted. That explanation did not change the basic sequence: the video went up, drew immediate condemnation as racist, and then disappeared after the White House shifted from defense to blame.

The political significance was not that Trump once again posted something incendiary. It was that the reaction crossed party lines quickly enough to leave Republicans publicly answering for a post that many of them would normally have ignored or defended.