- President Donald Trump shared a video on Twitter early Sunday that shows Florida residents clashing at a pro-Trump golf cart rally earlier in June.
- In the video, the president’s supporters in The Villages senior community in Florida are met with counter-protesters wielding signs with anti-Trump messaging.
- At the beginning of the video, when one anti-Trump demonstrator called a supporter of the president racist, he responded by chanting “white power” and pumping his fist.
- In sharing the video, the president thanked “the great people of The Villages” in the since-deleted tweet.
- A spokesperson for the president said later Sunday that Trump “did not hear” the phrase used in the video before he shared it.
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President Donald Trump early Saturday shared a video that showed one of his supporters chanting “white power” at a pro-Trump parade in Florida earlier this month, calling the participants “great people” in a since-deleted tweet.
The two-minute clip begins with two apparent supporters of the president, who are driving a golf cart down the street as part of a pro-Trump golf cart rally in The Villages senior community in Florida. Their golf cart has two signs in support of the president’s bid for reelection, one reading “Trump 2020” and another reading “America First.”
As they drive past, anti-Trump protesters who gathered on the side of the street shout at them, with one man heard repeating the word “racist.” In response, the man driving the golf cart is heard repeating “white power” while pumping his fist in the air as he drives out of frame.
“Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” the president tweeted on Sunday, sharing the video. “The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!!”
Reaction to the president's sharing of the video was largely negative and even came from within the Republican Party.
"He should not have retweeted and he should just take it down," South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott said during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "It is indefensible."
By 11 a.m. Sunday, the tweet, which Trump sent around 7:40 a.m., no longer appeared on the president's Twitter profile. Judd Deere, a spokesperson for the president, said Trump had not heard the phrase uttered in the video before he shared the clip.
"President Trump is a big fan of The Villages," Deere said. "He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters."
While the video was tweeted Saturday and so far received nearly 15,000 retweets, it appears to have been recorded on June 14, according to a recap of the rally posted by the community news outlet Villages News.
The video features other tense clashes between Trump supporters driving their golf carts decked out in American flags and pro-Trump swag and counter-protesters holding anti-Trump signs and signs bearing the name of former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president.
Seniors from The Villages in Florida protesting against each other: pic.twitter.com/Q3GRJCTjEW
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) June 27, 2020
"Nazi, racist pig," one anti-Trump demonstrator can be heard yelling at another man in the video, in one of many similar instances. At one point, the protestor steps in front of a golf cart before the driver hits the gas, bumping into her.
The White House did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on Sunday.
While the president has long been accused of being racist and using the language of white supremacists and similar far-right groups, Trump has often said he believes he is the "least racist person in the world."
In 2017, after the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the president notably said there were "very fine people on both sides" of the altercation that included both white supremacists and anti-racist protestors. More recently, in May, Trump used similar language, calling protesters "very good people" after they carried guns into the Michigan Capitol to demonstrate against the governors' stay-at-home order.
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