Wake Up, Look Up

Hello everyone and thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, did he really just post that? This is prompted by an article I read in the Washington Post called, called Trump Shares, then Deletes Video Depicting Obamas as Apes. You've probably heard this story recently. President Trump shared and later deleted. We'll get to that in just a second. A video on Truth Social showing Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as, apes. Now, the sentiment of the video is that Donald Trump is king of the jungle and he lords over all of his enemies. Of course, the problem with this, I mean, there are a lot of problems with this, but the problem with this is that the depiction of African Americans as monkeys is a well known racist trope. Everybody knows that that is a negative depiction of African Americans. Everybody knows. Which means posting a video in which two black people are depicted as apes is inescapably racist. it just depends on what form of racism you think it is. Either it's aggress racist in the sense that you knew what you were saying and you did it anyways, or it's stupidly racist in that you lack the intelligence to determine that it's racist and you shared it. And therefore being both an idiot and a racist, I, don't know which applies here. And by the way, even the sentiment that the President of the United States is king of the jungle, quote unquote, and lords over his enemies is divisive, negative, destructive, demeaning and all those things independent of the racism. And I know some people love to say that this podcast is left leaning or liberal, despite the many episodes we've done holding the Democrats to account. So you don't have to take my word for it. Take the words of Republican Senator Tim Scott from of all places, South Carolina, who said, and I quote, this is the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. Clearly, Senator Scott, a Republican, a conservative, saw it the same way I did and so many other people did. Now, the White House at first refused to apologize, defended the video as symbolic and dismissed criticism as fake outrage, and then quietly, hours later, deleted the video. So which is it? Is it racist and offensive and wrong and thus needs to be deleted? Or is it right and okay, and critics are ridiculous, in which case have the courage to leave it up, but when you delete it, you're acknowledging, at minimum it was ridiculous and at Most. It was extremely racist. Listen, the Bible says this. Matthew 12:36, Jesus says people will give account for every careless word they speak. And I'll just add, Jesus would have said if he said it in 2026, or tweet or type or post. People are responsible for their words. They're responsible to God. God who made all people, including African Americans, in his image. God who determined the difference between people and monkeys, image bearers. And not God who says that loving people, not demeaning people, is his expectation of everyone. But that will be between President Trump and. And God instead. Since to my knowledge, President Trump is not a listener of wulu, but you are, let me say this. Do not defend this video. I don't care what your politics are. If you think President Trump is the greatest president of all time, if you would vote for him if he could run again, that's up to you. Do not defend this video. If you defend this video, you have done two things that I think you need to repent of. One, you have left rationality. There is no way to justify this. Everyone knows you don't call black people monkeys or you don't draw pictures of Jewish people with large noses. There are certain racist tropes that we all know are off limits. You know that. And shame on you if you've pretended that you don't. And if your defense is it's just funny for him to show how he's king of the jungle and. And demean his opponents, shame on you. First Corinthians 13 says, Though I have faith to move mountains, if I don't have love, I am nothing. So even if you think this video was right and that I'm being too sensitive, it was unloving, it was unkind. And before you jump to will the Democrats do this or who cares? That's like a six year old who punches his sister and when confronted for it, blames her for all the things she did. Maybe she did do some things. You can't punch your sister and you can't post racist videos online. Certainly if you're the President of the United States. And if you defend it, I just think you're so out of bounds, you got to wake up and realize, where did I go wrong? But the second thing I'll say is this. Black people matter. They matter. They're made in the image of God. You can't demean them. You can't demean them and then insult their intelligence by pretending you didn't demean them. you just can't and it breaks my heart that I have to say that. And it breaks my heart even more to already know what some of the comments online are gonna be. Look, you can call me any name you want. Liberal. Woke. I'll stand on the record of now over 400 episodes of this podcast in which I've, basically challenged every political entity you possibly can. But I'm on the side of not sharing racist videos. I'm on the side of not defending them. And forget me for a second, Jesus is on the side of that. And you and I are just as responsible for every careless word we speak or share or post or retweet or defend as President Trump is. You're going to stand before God? Do you really want to defend this video to him? Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. 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Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!