Once again, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) has voiced his displeasure with Donald Trump as POTUS addressed Congress, and once again the Texas Democrat has been made to leave the chamber.
Green held up a sign that read “Black People Aren’t Apes, as Trump entered the floor of the House of Representatives to deliver the first State of the Union of his second term. When Trump and his entourage of GOP leaders walked down the aisle, Majority Leader Steven Scalise tried unsuccessfully to tear the sign down.
In a chamber with a number of Democrats boycotting Trump, the two decade serving Congressman continued to hold the sign up protesting the vile video POTUS posted late on February 5 depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
Within minutes of Trump taking the podium, Rep. Green held up his sign again.
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In a repeat of Trump’s record breaking long speech before Representatives, Senators, cabinet members, SCOTUS and invited guests last year, Rep. Green was then escorted out of the room. Just like 2025, Republicans filled the air with chants of “USA, USA!” as Green left.

While the C-Span cameras captured Rep. Green’s protest and sign, and GOP reactions, they were quick to cut away to wide shoots once security began leading the longtime Lone Star state Congressman to the door. On CNN, MS Now and others, there was no mention of what was occurring in real time as Trump started talking and talking in what he had already promised would be a “long speech.”
Blaming a still unidentified aide for actually re-posting the racist video on Trump’s Truth Social account just hours after vigorously defending it, the White House took the clip down later on February 6.
Still, that same day, Trump insisted he did nothing wring and would not apologize.
First posted in late 2025 by a “@XERIAS_X” account, the 55-second video depicts Trump as a lion, while Hillary Clinton and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani are depicted as a warthog and hyena respectively. Playing to some of the worst racism from a POTUS who has never been hesitant to be openly racist, the two-second scene appears at the end of the video with the Obamas as apes, dancing in the jungle to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
Over a week later, citing the “clown show” of social media (and by implication the Trump administration) a still circumspect President Obama said “I think it’s important to recognize that a majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling.” Waving his optimistic flag, Obama added tro Brian Tyler Cohen in a recent interview: “It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction. But as I’m traveling around the country, as you’re traveling around the country, you meet people, they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness.”
Playing to the crowd watching on TV and online tonight, Trump had the Gold medal winning Men’s US Hockey team up in the gallery as well as a nearly 100 year-old veteran as he recited his usual personal attacks on Joe Biden and offered partisan praised of himself.
Eventually censured by the House and thrown under the bus by a number of his fellow Dems, Rep Green last year shook his eagle tipped cane at Trump as he declared that the MAGA boss did not have a mandate to cut Medicaid.
Another censuring may be in Rep. Green’s near future now too, or not. Either way, the Congressman made it pretty clear earlier this week that he wouldn’t be giving any SOTU interviews today.

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