Trump posted an edited photo showing Obama on Air Force One sprayed with graffiti

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday posted a fake photo of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding Air Force One that was sprayed with graffiti.

This came months after another racist post by the president that showed the couple as monkeys in the jungle. This was deleted after bipartisan backlash.

Read more: Trump’s racist post about the Obamas was deleted after backlash despite the White House defending it earlier

The latest photo shows the Obama family smiling and waving at the top of the stairs next to a blue and white Air Force One with graffiti including the Democratic Party campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” “Obama,” and “BLM,” which stands for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows Arabic writings on the plane saying the phrase “Alhamdulillah,” which means “Praise be to God” or “Praise be to God.”

The use of graffiti is a coded message to remind people of crime and urban decadence and has been used in racist messages against black people in the past.

Trump has a long record of intense personal criticism of the Obama family and use of inflammatory, and sometimes racist, rhetoric. This includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and posts that sparked outrage on his website Truth Social.

The president’s racist post to the Obama family as presidents came in February, during the first week of Black History Month. It was removed after widespread criticism from civil rights leaders and Republican senators. However, Trump refused to apologise, and a staffer was later blamed for making the post.

This time, Air Force One is a sensitive topic since Trump last week took his maiden flight on the new Air Force One — a modified Boeing 747-800 valued at $400 million as a gift from Qatar. The light blue fuselage that helped Air Force One blend into the sky has been replaced with Trump’s preferred color scheme: a dark blue belly with red and gold stripes.

After delivering a speech on the National Mall in Washington on the occasion of Independence Day and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on Saturday evening, Trump did not perform any public events on Sunday and spent the day at his private golf club in Virginia. He is scheduled to leave on Monday for Türkiye to attend a summit with NATO allies.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The Obama family spokeswoman did not do so.

Sunday’s post also came on the heels of a post from last month when Trump shared a doctored photo of the new Obama Presidential Library in Chicago, so that the building appeared to have a large bag of trash on top and was surrounded by wasteland. He wrote at the time: “Obama’s library ten years from now will be a Mecca for those who hate America! President D.J.T.”

Trump has frequently criticized Obama’s library in public comments, and twice posted a photo of the library on his social media platform.

The Air Force One photo was part of a series of posts Trump made Sunday on the website Truth Social, including an earlier photo that appeared to show Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni smiling and looking up at Trump under the words “Restraining Order Wanted.”

It could also stir up a new storm at this week’s meetings in Turkey, where Trump suggested Meloni “repeatedly” asked to take a photo with him during the recent G7 summit — and suggested she begged for such a photo.

Trump’s statements prompted Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to cancel a subsequent trip scheduled to Washington, while Meloni described Trump’s account as “completely fabricated,” saying, “Italy and I never beg.”