Donald Trump is back at it on Truth Social. On Sunday, the president shared a fake, digitally altered photo of Barack and Michelle Obama waving from the steps of a heavily vandalized Air Force One. The plane in the image was covered in spray paint.
This isn’t his first rodeo with racially charged imagery targeting the former first couple. Just months ago, Trump’s account shared a post depicting the Obamas as primates in a jungle. That one vanished after a wave of bipartisan outrage, though Trump never apologized, later letting a staffer take the fall for the upload.
In this latest doctored image, the iconic blue-and-white presidential jet is defaced with slogans like “Yes We Can,” “Obama,” and “BLM.” It also features Arabic graffiti reading “alhamdulillah,” meaning “praise be to God.” The use of graffiti carries a blatant subtext. It is a classic dog whistle, long used in racially coded messaging to evoke images of urban decay and crime.
Trump’s obsession with the Obamas is a decade-long saga. From birther conspiracies to crude remarks about Black-majority nations, his rhetorical playbook is well-worn.
The timing of this latest post is particularly petty. Trump just took his first flight on a new, Qatari-gifted $400 million Boeing 747-800, which he had repainted from the classic sky blue to his preferred navy, red, and gold. After delivering a July 4th speech on the National Mall, Trump spent his Sunday golfing in Virginia before a scheduled trip to a NATO summit in Turkey. Neither the White House nor the Obamas’ spokesperson responded to requests for comment.
This is part of a pattern. Just last month, Trump posted a fake photo of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, depicting it as a trash-strewn wasteland. He claimed the library would eventually become a “Mecca” for America-haters.
Sunday’s social media spree didn’t stop with the Obamas. Trump also shared a meme of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni looking up at him, captioned “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.” It is a bizarre follow-up to his recent claims that Meloni repeatedly begged him for a photo at the G7 summit. That claim already caused a diplomatic rift, prompting Italy’s foreign minister to cancel a Washington trip and Meloni to flatly state, “Italy and I never beg.”
