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Donald Trump thanks ‘great people’ in video with man shouting ‘white power’ slogan

US President Donald Trump has been forced to remove footage he retweeted showing one of his supporters shouting “white power” at protesters.

In the video, Trump protesters and supporters can be heard shouting profanities at each other at an event at a retirement village in central Florida.

One man pumps his fist as he chants “white power” twice while driving his golf cart past protesters wielding “Make America Sane Again” signs.

The man was responding to a protester who asked “Where’s your white robe?”. He initially flashed a thumbs-up sign before repeating a slogan  often used by white supremacists.

The protester responds by saying “there you go, white power… did you hear that?”

Mr Trump retweeted the video thanking his supporters, but deleted it after it started trending on Twitter.

“Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” Mr Trump wrote, referring to a retirement community in Florida.

It quickly drew fierce criticism.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said Mr Trump did not hear the white supremacy reference in the video before he retweeted it.

Rather he shared the video simply because he “is a big fan of The Villages”, Mr Deere said. 

“He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters.”

US Senator Tim Scott told CNN “there’s no question that he should not have retweeted it”.

“It was so profanity-laced, the entire thing was offensive. Certainly, the comment about the white power was offensive,” the South Carolina Republican added.

“It’s indefensible. We should take it down.”

That was not the only Trump tweet to make headlines on Monday morning (Australian time).

Trump’s denial

Mr Trump has denied he knew about an intelligence report that concluded Russia had conspired with the Taliban and paid bounties to kill American troops serving in Afghanistan.

The New York Times report that said he was briefed about the intelligence finding and the White House’s National Security Council discussed it at a meeting in late March was labelled “fake news” by Mr Trump.

“Nobody briefed or told me, @VP Pence, or Chief of Staff @MarkMeadows about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an ‘anonymous source’ by the Fake News @nytimes,” Mr Trump wrote.

“Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us.”

Mr Trump’s denial came a day after Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called the revelation “shocking” during a virtual town hall meeting.

“The commander in chief of American troops, serving in the dangerous theater of war, has known about this for months, according to The Times, and done worse than nothing,” Mr Biden said.

In another tweet, Mr Trump wrote: “Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than the Trump administration.”

NYT reported that islamist militants, or criminals associated with them, collected bounty money.

It reported some 20 Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.

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