(Updated with Rep. Green statement) 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.
Tonight, 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 long 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.
Republicans moved fast tonight to shut Green down, with Reps. Pat Fallon (R-TX) and John McGuire (R-VA) and Sens. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) all trying to block the sign from being seen by the TV cameras.
Their efforts mainly failed.
Within minutes of Trump taking the podium, Rep. Green held up his apparently hand written sign again for all, including Trump, to clearly see.
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, USA!” as the African-American Congressman was ejected.
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.”
Outside the chamber, Rep. Green said to other C-Span cameras that he “would do it again. The 11-term Congressman, who is facing a stiff primary this year going into the midterms, emphasized that he refused “to tolerate this level of hate that the President is in fact, putting into policy.”
“We must take a stand against this level of invidious discrimination,” Congressman Green explained, stating there were others in both houses of Congress who agreed with him but won’t say it to Trump hmself. “I wanted him to know, and I wanted him to see it and hear it up close,” Green explained of why he held up the sign in front of Trump.” But judging from the expression on his face, he got the message. He saw it, he got the message, and I hope that others will let him have a similar message, so that he would discontinue this behavior.”
Blaming a still unidentified and seemingly still employed 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, and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, 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. Perhaps he will vote “present” this time round like he did last year.