Whew. Socialites, come get into this: A CNN panel went left real quick after guest Kate Zacharia decided to cape hard for Donald Trump… right after he shared a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
Zacharia, 41, a legal and political strategist who proudly calls herself a Trump supporter, popped up on CNN’s The Story Is with Elex Michaelson and wasted no time pushing back on the outrage.
The February 6 segment ran under the chyron “Trump won’t apologize for sharing racist video of the Obamas,” but Zacharia was clearly not here for that framing. Her reasoning? Votes, vibes, and celebrity proximity. She said, “When Trump won the Hispanic-Latin vote by a historic margin, the most any Republican has in history, the most Black voters since the 1960s. He’s not racist.” She didn’t stop there.
“He was on stage with Nicki Minaj the other day. I mean, this man is not racist. He made it very clear what happened in that statement.”
That statement came after Trump, 79, shared a 60-second video on his Truth Social account that ended with a two-second clip portraying former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
As we previously reported, their faces were digitally placed onto the animals while The Lion King’s “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played in the background. Subtle? Absolutely not.
The video stayed up for about 12 hours before being taken down. At first, the White House blamed the post on a staffer who “erroneously” shared it. That explanation didn’t last long.
Trump later admitted he personally instructed aides to post the video, though he claimed he only watched the beginning and didn’t see the racist imagery at the end.
Despite condemning the content afterward, Trump has yet to apologize, something that’s only fueled the backlash from both sides of the aisle.
Whew!