President Donald Trump has shared another inflammatory image attacking former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama on his Truth Social platform, this time featuring a doctored photograph of the couple boarding a spray-painted Air Force One.
The falsified image, posted Sunday, shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a presidential plane covered in graffiti. The spray-painted markings on the aircraft included Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” the word “Obama,” “BLM” as a reference to Black Lives Matter, and Arabic text reading “alhamdulillah,” meaning “praise be to God” or “thank God.”
The doctored photo represents the latest in a pattern of increasingly provocative and demeaning imagery the president has shared targeting the former first family. It arrives just five months after Trump posted another racist image in February depicting the Obamas as primates in a jungle setting. That post drew swift and stiff bipartisan backlash from civil rights leaders and Republican senators, prompting its removal.
The timing carries particular significance given Trump’s recent use of the new Air Force One, a $400 million retrofitted Boeing 747-800 gifted to the United States by the government of Qatar. Trump took his maiden voyage on the aircraft just a week prior to Sunday’s post, marking the first official presidential use of the controversial plane. The new aircraft features Trump’s preferred color scheme of navy blue, red, and gold stripes, replacing the iconic light blue hull that had defined the presidential aircraft for decades.
According to experts and political analysts, the use of graffiti imagery carries particular weight as a coded message referencing crime and urban decay. Such visual language has historically been employed in racist messaging directed at Black people and communities.
Trump’s pattern of attacks on the Obamas extends far beyond the recent months. He has a documented yearslong record of intensely personal criticism of the former president and first lady, including promoting the discredited conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the United States. His social media posts have featured crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and other inflammatory rhetoric that has sparked widespread condemnation.
Just weeks before Sunday’s post, in June, Trump shared a doctored image of Obama’s newly completed presidential library in Chicago depicting the building as surrounded by garbage and wasteland. Trump posted the altered image at least twice to his social media platform, writing, “The Obama Library ten years from now will be a ‘Mecca’ for those who hate America! President DJT.”
The latest post was part of a broader collection of Sunday messages on Truth Social. Another image targeted Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, appearing to show her gazing upward at Trump with the words “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED” overlaid on the photo. The post appeared designed to mock and embarrass the Italian leader, particularly as Trump had recently suggested that Meloni had asked “over and over” for a photograph with him during the recent Group of Seven summit.
In February, when Trump shared the racist video depicting the Obamas as apes, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially called criticism of the post “fake outrage” and characterized it as a meme portraying Democrats as characters from the Lion King. However, the White House quickly reversed course following bipartisan condemnation. A White House official stated that a staffer had “erroneously” made the post and it had been taken down. Trump told reporters he had only viewed the beginning of the video and did not see the portion depicting the Obamas. When asked if he would apologize, Trump responded, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican serving in the Senate, had called the February post “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” drawing public condemnation from the president’s own party. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries had written on social media that Trump was a “vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder,” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the imagery “racist,” “vile,” and “abhorrent.”
As of Sunday evening, neither the White House nor representatives for the Obamas had issued any public response to the latest image. Trump spent Sunday at his golf club in Virginia following his Saturday evening speech at the National Mall in Washington, where he marked American independence and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He is scheduled to depart Monday for Turkey to attend a NATO summit.