The Charlamagne Trump White House response is now driving backlash after Charlamagne Tha God called Donald Trump “the drama.”
Charlamagne Tha God put Donald Trump on Donkey of the Day this week and the White House came back swinging. Loren LoRosa pulled the full statement from a White House spokesperson, and it lands exactly the way you’d expect.
Following Saturday night’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Charlamagne used his Monday morning Donkey of the Day segment on The Breakfast Club to flip the “tone down the rhetoric” framing right back on Trump. He told his audience he was sick of media personalities asking whether the left needs to soften its language and said the question should be aimed at exactly one person, Donald J. Trump himself. His closing line landed like a brick. “Hey Trump, you’re the drama.”
The clip ran on Fox News by midday. By evening, the White House had issued a response through spokesperson Allison Schuster, sent in full to Loren LoRosa.
“Vile political rhetoric like this is extremely dangerous and life-threatening. It’s unhinged commentary like Charlamagne Tha God’s that inspires political violence, and he should be especially mortified of his words given this weekend’s egregious attempt against the President and others in his administration.”
The shooting at the WHCA Dinner is real. The suspect, 31 year old Cole Allen of Torrance, California, allegedly left a manifesto and reportedly told investigators he intended to target Trump administration officials. That part isn’t in dispute. What is in dispute, and what Charlamagne was getting at, is who keeps lighting the match. Trump has spent the better part of a decade insulting, threatening, and dehumanizing journalists, political opponents, immigrants, Black women in office, judges, and anyone else in his way. He’s called Charlamagne himself a racist sleazebag and a low IQ individual on Truth Social. The same White House that has tolerated and amplified that kind of rhetoric every day now wants Black media to mortify itself for naming the source.
The pattern is older than Charlamagne. Black voices that say what other people won’t always get hit with the “you’re the dangerous one” framing. That’s not new and it isn’t subtle. Charlamagne wasn’t calling for harm against anyone. He was telling the truth about who is setting the temperature in this country. The White House is welcome to disagree. They just shouldn’t expect Black radio to read off their script.
