During a private speech with Republican National Committee donors on Friday night at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump reportedly attempted to mock Democrats for the controversy surrounding Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and his racist yearbook photo, by joking that his Secret Service agents at the White House were “in blackface,” Axios reported.
Referring to his week alone holed up in the White House over the holidays while the government was shut down — a month-long crisis of his own making — Trump went on a familiar tangent about how Secret Service agents were his only company over the holidays. According to people who attended the speech who spoke to Axios, Trump spoke about how many agents were guarding the White House: “They’re in the trees, on the lawn.”
“They’re in blackface,” he said, making a cringe-worthy quip about the agent’s goggles and masks.
Sources told Axios they think Trump was attempting to knock Northam, whose governorship has recently come into question after a photo of him in blackface surfaced from a college yearbook. In a botched handling of the controversy, Northam initially apologized for the photo, only to later claim it wasn’t him before admitting at a press conference that he wore blackface to dress up like Michael Jackson when he was in college.
The two sources who spoke to Axios shared the information based on their memory of the event because attendees were forced to place their cellphones in magnetized bags while at the clubhouse.
