Featured Image Credit: Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, Racism, Politics, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, US News, Twitter
Ellie Kemp
Topics: Donald Trump, Racism, Politics, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, US News, Twitter
Democratic Congressman Al Green has urged people to 'fight back' after he was ejected from President Trump's State of the Union address on Monday (February 24).
Trump addressed politicians in the US Capitol's House of Representatives chamber for the annual speech, which, held every January or February, sees the President set out his agenda and highlight his achievements of the past year.
While Trump's speech was laden with inaccuracies, he also used the opportunity to draw attention to his wife, Melania and her Amazon Prime Video documentary.
But before the address even began, attention turned to Texas representative Al Green, who stood in the center aisle of the room holding a sign that read 'Black people aren't apes!'
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This was in reference to Trump sharing a 'vile' video on Truth Social depicting former President Obama and First Lady Michelle as monkeys earlier this month.
The video showed America's first black president and his wife as primates as the song 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' played in the background.
It featured at the end of a larger video making unsubstantiated claims about election fraud, but when the White House was first asked why the POTUS had shared such racist imagery, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt decried the questions as 'fake outrage'.
The White House ultimately blamed the video on a staffer who 'erroneously made the post.'
Obama himself addressed the video on an episode of Brian Taylor Cohen's podcast, saying: "I think it's important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling."
As the Guardian reports, Green clung to the hand-written sign as he was escorted out of the chamber, with Republican representatives attempting to grab or block the sign from the view of cameras.
As Green exited the chamber, some Republicans could be heard chanting "USA! USA!”
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, Green went on to urge people to 'stand with me' and 'fight back' by voting for him on Election Day on March 3.
He has served as representative for Texas' ninth congressional district since 2005.
It's the second consecutive year Green has been thrown out of a State of the Union address, having been ordered out by House Speaker Mike Johnson last year for yelling responses as the president spoke.
This year, Trump delivered the longest-ever State of the Union speech, falsely claiming that Biden let almost 12,000 murderers into the country and that he inherited 'record inflation' from his predecessor.
Trump also wrongly asserted he'd secured ‘$18 trillion’ in investments - described by a CNN factcheck as a 'figure of fiction' - and claimed foreign countries are paying his tariffs, when in fact businesses importing to the US are.
However, as the BBC reports, he failed to mention the ICE protests and deaths in Minnesota, the Epstein files and his desire to take over Greenland for national security purposes.