President Donald Trump posted a video of a class of kindergartners celebrating their “graduation” without any context or caption to Truth Social on Monday morning.
The footage is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota, according to the New Republic.
The video shows 21 children in caps and gowns on stage, singing together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs, indicating that they are muslim.
Not long after posting the video, Trump then reposted it, quoting another Truth Social user who had added a comment.
“Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab...in kindergarten,” the comment, by user ‘End Wokeness,’ said.
The two posts have attracted negative comments on the platform. One commenter responded, “future terrorists.” Another’s rant starts: “These children aren’t even cute to me.”
The commentary on the posts is largely full of anti-muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment, which begs the question, why would the president of the United States want to amplify this kind of commentary? The Daily Beast asked the White House that question, but did not immediately receive a response.
There is a large and diverse muslim community in St. Paul, and one of Trump’s foes in Congress is Minnesotan congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who represents the Minnesota 5th district, the neighboring district to where Gateway Academy is located.
Omar, the first Somali American to be elected to Congress, is often a target of Trump attacks on social media, where he has called her “low IQ” and accused her of complicity in a fraud scandal in Minneapolis.
After the State of the Union, Trump attacked Omar and another muslim congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, telling his followers on Truth Social they were “lunatics.”
“When you watch Low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event, they had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people, LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalized,” he said.
“When people can behave like that, and knowing that they are Crooked and Corrupt Politicians, so bad for our Country, we should send them back from where they came — as fast as possible. They can only damage the United States of America, they can do nothing to help it."
Gateway Academy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
