The Day the Internet Went Bonkers Over a Video Trump Posted (But What Else is New)

In Proverbs 18:17-19, we're given these three wise sayings: "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. The lot puts and end to quarrels and decides between powerful contenders. A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle."

Sometimes the proverbs are straight-forward; other times it may take a little work to glean their wisdom. But when we apply these three sayings to a recent internet controversy involving the President of the United States, the benefit is some holy sanity in the midst of this on-edge and crazy world.

Another Case of Social Media Hysteria

On Thursday evening, February 5, President Donald Trump shared a video on his Truth Social account that absolutely blew up social media. But if you missed the whole video and only caught the outrage, then surely missed the context of what happened.

If you came into the middle of the fracas, you may have seen a still image of a video Trump posted which depicted former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as gorillas. This was snatched up and disseminated on every social media platform, with many calling Trump a racist for sharing such a video in which the black former president and his wife were portrayed as apes.

By Friday morning, the video had been deleted. But the outrage machine was already doing its thing. Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders called it "a disgustingly racist video," and said, "Are my Republican colleagues going to continue to bend the knee to a racist, authoritarian president who wants the American people to bow down before him?"

Republican Senator Tim Scott commented and said, "Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The President should remove it."

Russell Moore, Editor-at-Large for Christianity Today, shared the still image of the Obamas and called it, "Racist. Deranged. Humiliating to our country. The fact that we have decided to pretend to this is normal every day is a moral abomination. Have we any shame? And every day an entire generation is being told it is 'Christian' to support this. God have mercy on us."

Mike Cosper, senior contributor at Christianity Today, also called it "racist" and "an admission of an utterly profound incompetence and unfitness." An account on Instagram called The Dad Briefs accused Trump of sharing the video for "strengthening ties with the racists in his base."

David French of the New York Times called it, "Grotesque and evil. There's no way to spin or rationalize this. It is exactly what it is. And he is who we said he was." His wife Nancy quoted from James 3: "With the tongue, we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness." That was ironic, and perhaps you'll understand why in a moment.

Again, if you came into the middle of the outrage, like I did, that's all you saw. You probably got none of the context. The fact of the matter was that President Trump did not publish a video in which he was sharing in this depiction of the Obamas as apes.

The video that was posted to Trump's account on Truth Social was one minute and two seconds long, and the video was about possible election fraud that took place in 2020 (which I'm not going to argue about here—you can look that up yourself if you like).

At the very end of that video, for hardly two seconds, there was a quick blip of the Obamas in an AI generated video with their heads on the bodies of apes as they began smiling and dancing. And as quickly as you saw it, the video ended. It would have taken you longer to say, "Uh, what was that?" than it would have taken you to see it.

I believe it's pretty obvious what happened. Someone (as it turned out, one of Trump's staffers) had screen recorded the short video on election fraud. At the end of the recording, the video auto-scrolled to play the next video, as is often the case with social media videos.

That next video was made by someone who used AI to animate the heads of several liberals on the bodies of various cartoon animals dancing along to the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens. Donald Trump comes walking through the jungle with his head on the body of a lion, and all of the liberal animals gleefully bow to him as he walks by.

But it's pretty racist to depict the Obamas as apes, right? I would agree with that, except that the previous president Joe Biden, who is not black, was also depicted as a monkey in the video. You'd have to know the heart of the person who made the video to know for sure if he was racist.

Said my friend Samuel Sey (who, if it needs to be said, is black), "The Democrats are lying. Trump wasn't being racist towards Barack and Michelle Obama. The full video also depicts Joe Biden as a monkey, Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat, and Kamala Harris as a turtle. The President shouldn't share foolish videos like that, but it's not racist."

Erick Erickson of the Erick Erickson show responded to Samuel and said, "Man, I'm sorry, but 'Trump wasn't being racist' because Joe Biden was a monkey and two other black politicians were something other than monkeys is just some serious nonsense. Do you even hear yourselves?" Erickson concluded with an acronym that contains the F-word in it. Gracious, people, calm down!

Said an account called AlphaFox, "The last two seconds of this video is what all the liberals are whining about. It's obvious it should have been clipped since it has nothing to do with the original post/video. Please stop crying racism over an intern's clipping ability."

President Trump didn't exactly apologize for the video, but he did say he didn't like it either. While aboard Air Force One, here is what President Trump said to the press:

"I looked at it, and I saw it, and I just looked at the first part of it, and it was about voter fraud in someplace, Georgia... I didn't see the whole thing. I guess toward the end of it, there was some kind of a picture that people don't like. I wouldn't like it either. But I didn't see it. I looked at the first part, which was really about voter fraud... We took it down as soon as we found out about [the image at the end]."

In addition to that story, Trump also answered questions about the U.S./Iran nuclear talks which had resumed and developments in the war between Russia and Ukraine. For him, the rest was business as usual, and he wasn't getting sidelined by this foolish controversy.

You may not have heard that the United States had arrested Zubayar al-Bakoush, one of the alleged perpetrators of the Benghazi attack in 2012, in which U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was murdered along with three other Americans.

You also may not have heard that Imane Khelif, who won the gold medal in women's Olympic boxing in 2024, has actually been a man all along. He is now banned from women's Olympic boxing, though there's been nothing about him being stripped of his gold medal for punching women in the face.

But we can't talk about any of that. Social media had to be infatuated with a two second clip on Trump's social media account ripped out of context which he didn't even post. All of this was yet another example of premature and selective outrage.

Another Case of Selective Outrage

Now lest anyone think that the reason I'm writing this is because I'm some MAGA enthusiast who just loves everything the President does, that's not me. I just posted a video a week ago in which I said of President Trump, "Repent, for judgment is coming. God hates sexually immorality and the sacrifice of unborn children. Turn to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and bow to His authority. Lead this nation in obedience to Christ and His word."

I've been far more critical of President Trump than I've been praising of him. But I can also acknowledge when he does things well. He's certainly better than what we could have ended up with after the 2024 election. I pray for our president, as 1 Timothy 2:1-4 tells us to, so that we as Christians would lead peaceful and quiet lives, godly and dignified in every way, and perhaps our leaders would be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.

The outrage of the many people because of this video was irrational—more unreasonable than the video itself. And it is a dumb video. It's childish and beneath the dignity of a president to post such things on his personal social media account, even accidentally, even if done by a staffer.

But some people put way more energy in reacting to and decrying this video than they will put into the attrocities being perpetrated by the Left. Said Allie Beth Stuckey of the Relatable podcast:

"It’s not that I don’t think you can criticize Trump as a Christian leader. It’s just that I find your criticism suspect if the only time you pipe up about politics is when Trump or Republicans have done something you don't like. Abortion and the genital mutilation of kids aren’t enough to generate your public outrage, but Trump's tweets are.

"The only time we can count on your voice is when liberals are angry, but never to call out the injustice of vaccine mandates, pregnancy centers being firebombed, or the Biden admin taking school lunches away from schools who wouldn't go along with the trans madness. That's just gonna make it tough for me to take your outcry seriously."

Said Melissa the Hopeful Homemaker:

"So let me see if I'm following the logic correctly. Trump posted a screen-recording of a video to his social media account that contained a tiny snippet of another video that started auto-playing next. The post has since been deleted, but I’m supposed to take this as clear evidence that I obviously should have voted for the woman who, among other things, pledged to enshrine Roe v. Wade into law, who celebrated the mutilation and sterilization of gender-confused children, who abused her power to try to prosecute David Daleiden for exposing the trafficking of aborted babies' bodies [and their mutilated parts], and who presided over the reckless and lawless border crisis that allowed multitudes of women and children to be raped and trafficked across the border? Sorry, that's gonna be a no from me, dog."

Fred Butler who works for Grace to You satirically commented, "This boomer move by Trump is a bridge too far. He has lost my support. So the only option this November for mid-terms is voting for radical leftists who want me dead, letting in 50 million unvetted illegal aliens, and gaying everything."

Jacob Huneycutt of Texas shared a post from author and preacher John Piper agreeing with Russell Moore about Trump being racist and deranged. Huneycutt pointed out that when Cities Church of Minneapolis was invaded by an angry mob to protest the deportation of illegal immigrants, Piper didn't publicly say anything about it—even though Cities Church was planted by John Piper's church. "But heaven forbid Trump repost a stupid meme," Huneycutt said.

Online personality Jeffery Mead shared the following thoughts:

"The people who were the loudest about this post—that was posted by a staffer, not even Trump himself—the staffer was being lazy, probably trying to get things done quick, and didn't cut out part of the screen recording, that's when this part [with Barack and Michelle Obama] came up on the screen.

"But notice, the same people who are pushing this all over the internet and talking about it and all this and that, they're quiet about things like this that have recently been happening in Minnesota—I'm going to give you two examples. Both of these have recently happened in Minnesota."

Mead's first video was of white liberals calling Department of Homeland Security agents who were black racist names, including, as you can probably imagine, the most common racial slur for black people. Mead's second video was of a man dressed as a woman calling a black ICE agent racial slurs. Keep in mind, this is in the context of rounding up illegal immigrants for deportation. The white liberals are calling the officers racist names. Mead went on to say:

"Now let's think about this. All these people who are all over this Trump post, have you heard them talking about this? Have you seen the Left calling out this abhorrent behavior? Have you seen them doing that en masse? No, they've been quiet. They like to act like this never happened. They're essentially saying, 'Yeah, it's fine, go ahead and call black agents n***ers, because they're in ICE anyway.'

"It's all about narrative control. We are in a propaganda war. If you don't know that, you should be aware of that. We're in a propaganda war. They're not principled. They don't care about being 'racist.' They care about winning politically. That's why you can have leftists in Minnesota calling black agents n***ers on camera and recording it, and the Left does nothing about it.

"Again, you're not seeing the Left come out en masse and condemn this behavior or try to cancel these people. You're not seeing any of that. They're just letting it happen because they truly don't care. They just use black people as political pawns. I just want to point out the hypocrisy and the selective outrage that's currently happening."

Now, I offer these takes not as much to convince you of something as I want to take a step back and broaden our perspective a little bit. Your social media experience is driven by an algorithm, and that algorithm is narrowly showing you the things that interest you, even when it comes to outraging you. Or it may be showing you what someone else wants you to see to steer you toward a particular narrative.

As I've heard it said, use the internet but don't let the internet use you. As with anything, we need to beware the wisdom of man and be filled with the wisdom of God. Ephesians 5:15-16 tells us, "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." So what can we learn from this?

Another Case for the Wisdom of Proverbs

Let's come back up to the three verses that I mentioned at the beginning. Proverbs 18:17 says, "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." There were a lot of people who jumped on this story and looked at first like they had a legitimate charge. Trump posted a video of the Obamas as apes; look, he's a racist!

But upon closer examination, we discovered that wasn't the story at all. President Trump even said he didn't like it the video being shared. The people who called him racist, deranged, and grotesque because of this post slandered the President of the United States. The Bible has a lot to say about slander. It even has something to say about speaking evil of our governing officials.

As 1 Peter 2:1 says, "Put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander," and verse 17 says, "Fear God. Honor the emperor." We read in Ecclesiastes 10:20, "Even in your thoughts, do not curse the king." And as I cited a moment ago from 1 Timothy 2:2, we are to pray "for kings and all who are in high positions," leading "peaceful and quiet lives."

The second verse, Proverbs 18:18 says, "The lot puts and end to quarrels and decides between powerful contenders." In context between the two other proverbs, this refers to cases of doubt where the evidence is inconclusive and does not lead to a satisfactory conclusion. In such cases, casting lots reveals the providential judgment of God and settles the matter. 

We must commit our ways to the Lord and come to a peaceful resolution. Our tendency is to settle our differences by exchanging blows, even through words on social media. But this should not be the way among the brethren. Stop investing so much emotional energy in such stupid stuff. Apologize where you need to, trust God, and move on.

And third, Proverbs 18:19 says, "A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle." We can be so stubborn in our biases that we put up an impenetrable barrier against reconciliation or reason. It may be easier to breach a border wall than it is to resolve our differences. 

Some of us need to learn to be difficult to offend. I speak as much to myself in this as to anyone. The easily offended put more strength into a grudge than into agreement, or into their biases than into their bygones. Put simply, get over yourself. Especially among the brethren, we must be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Ephesians 4:3).

In Conclusion

So in summary of these three proverbs, calm down, trust God, and be difficult to offend. There will be plenty of opportunities for us to pour our hearts into what matters. Save your strength for those things, but still do so in the peace of God. The rest of them will rage and expend all of their energy on silly social media controversies while we put our efforts toward more meaningful pursuits.

The world responds with selective outrage because they see no hope for their future. They get tossed to and fro by every shifting wind of every issue because they have no direction. Be we know who holds tomorrow. We know who holds our lives in His hand. We know who has worked out the end from the beginning. 

And so we understand with the Apostle Paul when he said, "Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand... And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:5, 7).