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A Boston pastor is facing pushback for condemning a video President Trump posted last Thursday, which included a depiction of former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The two-second clip appeared at the end of a video parody featuring Donald Trump as “The Lion King.” The AI-generated video portrayed other Democratic lawmakers as animals, as well, including former President Biden as a baboon, former Vice President Harris as a turtle, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) as a donkey, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a warthog. The two-second snippet of the Obamas as smiling apes appeared at the end of the video.
The offensive clip was posted last Thursday on the president’s Truth Social platform, with many publicly speaking out against it.
White House officials at first defended the post and claimed the president did not personally post the video, blaming an unnamed staffer.
Pastor Matt Chewning of Netcast Church took to Instagram to express his displeasure with the post, saying, “Dehumanizing people is never okay. Depicting Black Men and Women as animals isn’t politics. It’s racism, shameful, and dangerous. We can disagree fiercely without abandoning our humanity. This isn’t about parties.”
During an interview with CBN News, Chewning shared why he was motivated to speak out after learning over the years to see issues like racism through the eyes of those affected by it.
“We can either attempt to empathize with the hurt, or we can get defensive, and we could try to change people’s perspective when the reality is people’s perspective is their reality because it goes far beyond just a post,” Chewning explained. “You see a post like that through other people’s eyes, and you say, ‘that’s not great.'”
Several lawmakers have also voiced their concerns.
Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate and one of the president’s allies, called the clip “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) called the video “wrong” and “incredibly offensive.” He said, “whether intentional or a mistake,” the video “should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”
Several Christian leaders also condemned the post.
“When I saw the insensitive and racial depiction today on Truth Social of the former President and his wife, my heart sank,” Jentezen Franklin, a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, posted on Instagram.
Franklin continued, “It was a terrible post. In all times we need to remember to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.'”
Russell Moore, editor at large for Christianity Today, wrote, “Racist. Deranged. Humiliating to our country. The fact that we have decided to pretend 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.”
Meanwhile, many pushed back against Chewning’s decision to speak out.
A person named laruby_alc wrote under his post, “So, since we’re here…’Pastor’ do you have thoughts on everything else happening or are you just cherry picking what you choose to speak on and what not to? Also, why are blacks being highlighted when it wasn’t just blacks, but whites and Hispanics as well.”
“It’s not that serious,” commented a user named vaughn.ca.
Another named yaya.cva7 wrote, “The video wasn’t racist!”
Another said, “Unfollow.”
Chewning said he was not surprised by the opposition. “Most of it is just justification,” he said. “When people are confronted with what they see as a bias. They want to use their bias to fight back.”
He also shared about a shocking direct message he received from one woman.
“She told me that she thought we were a good church and she has family up in the Boston area where we’re located and that she was going to push people towards us, but she is no longer going to do that,” Chewning explained. “And by the way, she gave $1,000 of a donation at one point, and we will never receive another dollar or cent from her ever again.”
Chewning said threats like that should never be made amongst believers.
“For a believer to attempt to leverage money so that a pastor would appease their itching ear is so demonic and is so against the way of Jesus, right? It’s sick. It’s attempting to prostitute the church, right? ‘I’ll give you money if you satisfy me,’ is what that was trying to do. And ‘I will not give you money if you do not satisfy me.’ And man, there’s such danger in that,” he said.
Meanwhile, White House officials at first defended the post and claimed the president did not post the video.
President Trump said on Friday he “of course” condemns the now-deleted post but does not feel the need to apologize for posting it, telling reporters, “I didn’t make a mistake.”
“I just looked at the first part. It was about voter fraud in some place – Georgia. There’s a lot of fraud, voter fraud in 2020 and I didn’t see the whole thing,” the president said.
“Nobody knew that that was at the end,” Trump later added. “If they would have looked, they world have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down.”
In the meantime, Chewning said while he doesn’t believe the president is a racist, he points to the spiritual condition of all humans.
“I’m not trying to sit here to say that he’s racist. I don’t think he is,” said Chewning.
“We all are broken and we all have flesh and that flesh operates and leads itself in pride. And so, that pride always attempts to elevate yourself over somebody else and over the Lord at times. That can be racism, that can come across at nationalism. That can come across as your ethnicity is better than someone else’s ethnicity.”
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