Welcome to Black History Month, 2026. President Trump posted a video Thursday to his social media site that contained animated images depicting former President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. The White House took down the post Friday, initially calling it a meme before later characterizing it as a mistake by a staffer. But while the justifiable outrage over this overt racism unfolds, let’s look deeper into why this video is more than an affront to American values. It’s no accident that the images of the Obamas are embedded within a video about unsubstantiated voter fraud conspiracies from the 2020 election.
This video, experts say, represents an escalation in an assault likely to come on voting rights and access in the midterms. “Absolutely, there’s a connection to the vote,” Melina Abdullah, a professor at Cal State Los Angeles and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, told me Friday. Brian Levin, a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, added, “It’s about people that are [perceived as] undermining our elections and our democracy.”
Levin, who had just completed a chapter on authoritarianism for a new book examining the link between discrimination, social hierarchies and power, summarized the pattern. Vulnerable groups are demonized as dangerous and unfit for full citizenship, justifying the concentration of power in the hands of an elite few. Put simply, the message is that Black and brown people are inherently bad and should be excluded from the democratic process.
How does this play out at the ballot box? Talk of voter identification and “election integrity” is, according to these experts, often a pretext for suppressing the votes of those legally entitled to cast them. Those least likely to possess required documentation – such as a passport or birth certificate – are often Black or brown, poor, or live in densely populated urban areas with shared polling places.
The concern is that this rhetoric could lead to increased federal oversight at polling places in those areas, potentially intimidating or turning away legal voters. While hoping this never happens, both Levin and Abdullah expressed concern that the current undermining of the legitimacy of Black and brown voters is systemic and deeply troubling.
Trump’s video, Levin said, is “part of a floodgate of bigotry and conspiracy that relates to elections and immigrants and Black people.” He noted that the imagery is part of a broader “firehose” of white nationalist rhetoric emanating not just from Trump, but from the federal government itself. The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, for example, has shifted its focus toward challenging diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Just this week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission launched a probe into Nike, alleging discrimination against white people in hiring practices. “It has been not even a dog whistling, but a Xeroxing of the exact kind of terms that that I’ve been looking at on white supremacist and neo Nazi websites for decades,” Levin said.
While acknowledging it’s not his place to warn Black people about racism, Levin warned that authoritarianism ultimately targets everyone. The video, he argued, is a clear statement that Trump’s vision of America is one in which non-white and vulnerable groups are relegated to second-class citizenship. “He’s enabling an entire group of people who want to take this country back to a time when rampant violent white supremacy was enabled in the law,” Abdullah said. “What they mean is recapturing an old school, oppressive racism that is pre-1965 pre-Voting Rights Act.”
That message, Levin said, resonates with a significant portion of Trump’s base and, when constantly reinforced, can have violent consequences. He cited Trump’s tweet during the George Floyd protests – “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” – a phrase with a violent and racist history. Following that tweet, Levin said, the United States experienced some of the “worst days” for race-based violence.
“When a high transmitter, like a president, circulates imagery with regard to prejudice, it creates these stereotypes and conspiracy theories, which then are the groundwork for further conspiracy theories and aggression,” he added.
Abdullah expressed concern that even without official sanction, those empowered by these conspiracy theories will take action independently. “So the people who are so-called ‘monitoring,’ self-appointed monitors … This is who’s going to be pulling people out of voter lines, and so this is what he’s whipping up intentionally,” she said.
As the midterm elections approach, the stakes are high. The current administration is laser-focused on securing a victory, and limiting the electorate to those who support their agenda is seen as a key strategy.
