Wes Moore won’t call Trump racist over Obama apes post but doesn’t say he’s not: ‘I know his actions hit Black folks’

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, the nation’s only current Black governor, addressed the now-deleted post from Donald Trump’s account depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes at a town hall that aired Sunday.

Moore sat down with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell and declined to say directly whether he thought the president was a racist, calling it a question for Trump himself. But the governor did smile quickly, almost to himself, as O’Donnell described how Trump claimed he was the “least racist” president in history after an uproar over the post began.

“I think that’s a question for President Trump,” Moore said. “I can tell you I know how his actions hit Black folks, and how they hit people of color.”

He added: “I think his actions probably give the answer before he even has a chance to answer it himself."

Moore pointed to the video as well as the policy priorities of the Trump administration as evidence that the president may hold animus towards Black Americans.

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Maryland is home to tens of thousands of federal workers, and was hit particularly hard by the White House’s wild cost-cutting spree led by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative. Moore’s office claims that an estimated 24,900 Marylanders lost federal employment during the first year of Trump’s presidency, something the governor’s office has noted hit Black communities and women particularly hard.

During the CBS town hall, he referred to it as the “greatest assault on Black female employment that we’ve seen in our nation’s history”.

The video was posted from Trump’s Truth Social account and appeared to have been created originally by another user. It was deleted from Trump’s personal account hours later.

The video depicted the former president and his wife as apes in the jungle, imagery that aligned with historical racist depictions of Black people. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended the video and denied those connotations, but later the White House declared that it had been posted by a staffer by “mistake”.

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Trump himself has refused to apologize directly for the video post being spread by his acount.

The president’s critics haven’t bought that explanation. Republican Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black senator in the GOP, called it the “most racist thing” he’d seen emerge from the second Trump administration, and the video was roundly condemned by lawmakers on both sides in Capitol Hill. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, echoed the statement calling it a “mistake” and claimed that Trump himself had never seen it.

Obama responded to the video on a podcast with Brian Tyler Cohen that aired Sunday. The former president said that a majority of Americans find the White House’s conduct “troubling”, and added: “[T]here’s this sort of clown show happening in social media and on television, and what is true is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office. So that’s been lost.”

“But the reason I point out that I don't think the majority of the American people approve of this is because, ultimately, the answer is going to come from the American people,” he continued.

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Fallout from the video comes at a time when the White House cannot afford to lose further political capital on the Hill. The Republican House caucus is facing its thinnest majority yet as it hurtles towards the 2026 midterm elections, while Trump also continues to face defections in the Senate from moderate GOP senators.

The Maryland governor has repeatedly expressed his disinterest in running for president and did so again in his town hall with CBS, telling O’Donnell: “I’m not running for president...I don’t see a reason. I love my job. I love what I’m doing.”

But his prominence within the Democratic Party and the fact that Moore, if re-elected this November in a race he is widely expected to win, would be halfway through his second and final term as governor in 2028 has continued to stoke speculation about his potential future in national politics.

Moore is heavily favored to win re-election in deep-blue Maryland, and in recent days former Gov. Larry Hogan announced that he would not challenge him for the seat. Hogan is seen as one of the few Republicans in Maryland with statewide appeal, partly due to his anti-Trump stance.