A MAGA Voter’s Viral Takedown of Trump’s Racism Cuts Deep: “Pathetic!”

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After Donald Trump posted a viciously racist meme depicting the Obamas as apes, a self-identified three-time Trump voter called in to C-Span and unloaded. He described the meme as an “embarrassment to our country,” apologized for backing Trump, called out his lying and bribe-taking, and ripped him as “rotten” and “pathetic.” This comes after many Republicans condemned the post, leading the White House to take it down and blame an unnamed staffer for it. We think all this captures a newfound Trump-MAGA weakness in the culture. So we talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, author of a great new piece on the waning of Trump-MAGA’s cultural dominance. We discuss how formidable Trump-MAGA’s cultural relevance looked in 2024, why it has waned, how ICE has turned the culture against MAGA on a deep level, and what it all says about the future of MAGA and our country. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.4	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:32.6	It's not every day that Donald Trump backs down, but that's exactly what happened after he posted a vile racist video clip of the Obamas.
0:35.8	It triggered a massive outcry, and the post was quietly taken down.
0:41.1	Surprisingly, the backlash included some Republicans and one self-described three-time Trump voter
0:47.5	issued an extraordinary takedown of Trump apologizing to the nation for having ever supported him.
0:54.7	Why did all this happen in this particular case?
0:58.1	We think one reason is that Trump and MAGA are in an unusually weak position in the culture right now.
1:04.1	So we're talking to New Republic's senior editor, Alex Shepard,
1:07.4	who has a new piece explaining how Trump and MAGA have thrown away their cultural dominance over the last year. Good to have you on, Alex. It's great to be back. So as many of you have seen by now, Trump's Truth Social Feed featured a video clip with an image of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. It was set to The Lion Sleeps Tonight. When this blew up, White House
1:30.3	Press Secretary Caroline Levitt's first reaction was to call this an internet meme video depicting
1:35.5	Trump as king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. She dismissed the outcry
1:41.6	as fake outrage. Alex, your thoughts on all this?
1:45.0	Yeah, well, first of all, there are no apes in the Lion King.
1:47.8	So it was always a ridiculous defense to begin with.
1:51.7	But I think, you know, more to the point, you see this happen all the time now, that there's
1:56.3	this like real rush, particularly within the administration, whenever Trump does something vile or
2:01.1	racist, to just back it fully to the tilt before they, before they can do anything to change it
2:08.6	or to reverse course. And so you get this sort of situation. I think we're seeing this more and more
2:13.7	play out where there's increased pressure from other Republicans, in this case, senators,
2:18.9	including Susan Collins, who is, of course, concerned as she always is, but also Tim Scott,
2:24.1	among others. And I think that that put real pressure on the White House. The video was then taken
	...

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