Donald Trump used his social media account to publish a dizzying amount of nonsense on Thursday night, though one item stood out for obvious reasons: The president amplified a conspiratorial video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
At that point, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had some options, though she chose the worst one: The president’s top spokesperson said in a statement that the video was “from an internet meme” and that she had no use for “the fake outrage” surrounding the racist clip.
As the volume of bipartisan condemnations grew, the White House shifted gears, changed its story, deleted the online item and blamed an unnamed “staffer” who “erroneously” posted the video.
Three days later, the public conversation surrounding the fiasco appears to have subsided, but as the dust settles on yet another racist controversy surrounding the president, Friday’s developments offered three lessons with lingering significance.
1. Leavitt speaks for Trump — but only to a point. In theory, the White House press secretary is the president’s chief spokesperson. In practice, it’s not quite that simple. After Leavitt talked about Trump’s MRI exam last fall, for example, Trump contradicted her. After Leavitt downplayed Trump’s crusade to nationalize elections, he contradicted her again.
Leavitt tried to distance the president from the smear campaign against Alex Pretti, only to have Trump move in the opposite direction. She tried to claim that Trump supported Greg Bovino at Customs and Border Protection, shortly before the president again contradicted her.
On Friday, the problem reemerged, with Leavitt saying one thing (the outrage surrounding the racist video was “fake”), while the White House said something quite different (some “staffer” made a mistake), raising questions anew about the press secretary’s evaporating credibility.
2. Some congressional Republicans still have limits. It wasn’t long after the public learned that Trump had promoted yet another racist video when Republican Sen. Tim Scott, who is Black, wrote online that he was praying the video “was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” The South Carolinian, who’s currently chairing the National Republican Senatorial Committee, added: “The President should remove it.”
Other GOP lawmakers soon followed.
Leavitt told Fox News that “the leftist media” was to blame for the controversy, but the number of congressional Republicans who said this was a bridge too far suggested there are still some limits within the party.
3. This White House is a shambolic mess, filled with people who don’t know what they’re doing. MS NOW published a report on Friday that included a quote that stood out for me:
Leavitt’s initial response calling the video a ‘meme’ was issued unilaterally by the White House press office without the sign off of top senior officials, one senior White House official told MS NOW, speaking on the condition of anonymity about internal issues. That is standard protocol for a Trump White House, the official said.
‘You need to understand that this isn’t a usual political operation: Everyone has their own lane and usually it works out fine, until it doesn’t,’ the official said. ‘There are no big, long messaging meetings. No calendars. No strategy sessions. This isn’t a White House you see on “The West Wing.” There are no approvals.’
I tried to keep up on Team Trump’s line about the racist video as Friday progressed, but it became a daunting challenge. First, Leavitt’s line was at odds with her own colleagues’ line. Then, the president himself blamed a “staffer,” adding that he both saw the video and “passed it on” for publication, before concluding, “I didn’t know about it.”
Similarly, a White House official told Politico the president “legitimately didn’t” see the video, shortly before Trump told reporters, “I looked at it” before it was put online.
Complicating matters, these institutional breakdowns aren’t limited to the president’s social media feed. In November, The Washington Post published a report on the Trump administration’s challenges in negotiating an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and it quoted a U.S. official who said, “It’s been absolute chaos all day because even different parts of the White House don’t know what’s going on.”
We’re dealing with an executive branch in which the right hand doesn’t know what the even-further-to-the-right hand is doing.
