The Left — and even some on the Right — pounced on Friday after a video President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social the previous night concluded with a two-second clip depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. The video alleged that irregularities during the vote-counting process in several battleground states in the 2020 election may have altered the final results.
The White House attributed the clip’s inclusion to a staffer’s error. According to officials, the footage came from the opening of a Lion King–style meme video that cast Trump as the king of the jungle, with prominent Democrats portrayed as lower-status animals: Hillary Clinton as a warthog, former President Joe Biden as a buffoon, and others in a similar vein.
[I covered this story here.]
The Democrats’ manufactured outrage that consumed social media and cable news talk shows began on Friday and continued into the weekend.
One of the most hyperbolic reactions came from CNN political analyst Bakari Sellers during a panel discussion on Friday’s episode of The Don Lemon Show. He called for a “fumigation … to surgically remove the cancer that is the Donald Trump MAGA movement.” [Emphasis added.]
You know Joe Biden was somewhat of a bridge. He was supposed to be a bridge or a palette cleanser. Or somebody who morally and ethically was antithetical to who Donald Trump was.Uncle Joe was the nice guy, older white guy, comes in and you want to eat ice cream with him, right?I think what that episode in our country’s history showed us is that we really need a fumigation.We need an exorcism … We need a more aggressive approach to go in and surgically remove the cancer that is the Donald Trump MAGA movement.
[Please note that the six-person panel included five black panelists. For commentators who so frequently champion DEI talking points, that composition seems oddly inconsistent with the principles they claim to uphold.]
At any rate, Sellers remarks provide a glimpse into the Left’s current mindset.
Fumigation is the use of poisonous chemical gases to exterminate unwanted pests such as insects or rodents. While one could argue that Sellers was using the term metaphorically, he was plainly invoking it in the context of eliminating a group he regarded as political enemies. Given that in the not-so-distant past, fumigation — most notoriously through the use of Zyklon B — was employed to eradicate unwanted people, and that Sellers paired the remark with calls for more aggressive measures such as “surgical removal,” his choice of language warrants closer scrutiny.
Moreover, the Left’s persistent habit of labeling Trump as Hitler and his supporters as Nazis raises the possibility that Sellers is projecting his side’s darkest impulses onto his opponents.
However Sellers intended the remark, more than a decade after the first diagnosed cases of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” it would be wise to take him at his word.
The Left has grown increasingly radicalized since Trump arrived in Washington. It has pursued an ever-escalating series of efforts aimed at removing him from office, preventing his return, and now dismantling his legacy. If given the power to “exterminate” Trump supporters without consequence, is there any real doubt that some would actually use it?
The commenter below points out that the Nazis dehumanized a group of people during the Holocaust, which “made it ok to exterminate them like animals.”
Just as the Democrats are demanding an apology from Trump for his staffer’s error, are they willing to issue an apology for Sellers’ unchallenged rhetoric?
I seriously doubt it.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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