The posts nearly slid by in President Trump\u2019s chaotic social media feed this week, lost in a jumble of boasts about the economy and pictures of Washington landmarks dressed in their Fourth of July best.<\/p>\n
But there they were, a video<\/a> of Somali American kindergartners in blue caps and gowns during their promotion ceremony at their St. Paul, Minn., school, and again the same video<\/a> punctuated by a comment from an anonymous right-wing account called \u201cEnd Wokeness\u201d: \u201cEvery girl is in a hijab\u2026 in kindergarten.\u201d In the 14-second video, the children are singing an upbeat Somali educational song.<\/p>\n If Mr. Trump\u2019s sharing of the video posts did not cause much national furor, they sent shudders through Minnesota\u2019s large Muslim and Somali communities, whose members expressed indignation that the president was again vilifying them, and disbelief that he was doing so by targeting children.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a red line,\u201d said Khalid Omar, a community organizer with the interfaith group Isaiah and Faith, based in St. Paul. \u201cChildren who are just celebrating, and wanting to look like their mothers \u2014 forget about the hijab \u2014 who are just children enjoying themselves, seeing their families, singing. For him to go after those children, it\u2019s awful, it\u2019s dangerous, it\u2019s inhumane, it\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n For more than a year, Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked Minnesota\u2019s Somali community in a series of xenophobic tirades<\/a>. He has disparaged Somali immigrants as \u201cgarbage\u201d<\/a> who should \u201cgo back to where they came from.\u201d He has portrayed their children as a burden on schools. And he has demonized<\/a> Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Somali-born Democrat, including by mocking her hijab as a \u201clittle turban.\u201d<\/p>\n Seizing on a welfare fraud scandal<\/a> that was concentrated among Minnesota\u2019s Somali community, his administration launched an immigration crackdown, threatened to cut federal child care funding and started investigations that a judge found<\/a> were intended to \u201charass and retaliate against\u201d Democratic officials in the state.<\/p>\n Even after all of that, Mr. Trump\u2019s posts to his nearly 13 million followers on Monday still struck a particular nerve.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is a bigoted bully,\u201d said James J. Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute. \u201cHe picks on vulnerable people \u2014 women, immigrants \u2014 but picking on 5-year-olds, it\u2019s so low, even for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, declined repeated requests for comment on the president\u2019s posts. Instead, she defended his previous statements about Somali schoolchildren burdening Minnesota\u2019s public schools.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump is right,\u201d Ms. Jackson said. \u201cAliens who come to our country, complain about how much they hate America, fail to contribute to our economy, rip off Americans and refuse to assimilate into our society should not be here. And nothing about that is racist.\u201d<\/p>\n National civil rights organizations and state leaders added to local activists\u2019 condemnation of the posts over the course of the week.<\/p>\n \u201cI am no longer surprised when Donald Trump uses his platform to provoke attacks on Black, brown, or immigrant communities \u2014 but I am always disgusted,\u201d said Keith Ellison, the state\u2019s attorney general.<\/p>\n But on the other side, messages supporting Mr. Trump\u2019s postings \u2014 in overwhelmingly racist, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim terms \u2014 also grew.<\/p>\n In response to the posts, Mr. Trump\u2019s followers called the students \u201cfuture terrorists\u201d and said the children wearing hijabs were a \u201cdisgrace.\u201d They called on him to \u201cdeport all Muslims\u201d and to ban Islam. One account with more than a million followers declared that Mr. Trump had exposed a \u201cterrifying reality\u201d and that America was being \u201cconquered.\u201d<\/p>\n This is not the first time Mr. Trump has targeted Somali children.<\/p>\n In April of last year, Mr. Trump said: \u201cYou have states like Minnesota, where the school systems are collapsing under the weight of the refugee children, especially from Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n In November, he bemoaned \u201ca vibrant beautiful community in Minneapolis, gone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not recognizable,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have children that are going to school that don\u2019t speak a word of English, they don\u2019t speak a word of anything, and the teachers, they cry themselves to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump has long used his social media account to amplify racist imagery and vilify immigrant groups. When he posted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes<\/a> this year, the backlash was so swift and bipartisan that Mr. Trump removed the post. (He refused to apologize and blamed it on an aide).<\/p>\n This week, Mr. Trump also posted a doctored image<\/a> of the Obamas waving from Air Force One, which had graffiti that included the acronym \u201cBLM\u201d and Arabic writing. When he speaks about the former president, it is often using his middle name, Hussein.<\/p>\n Some critics of the posts noted that Mr. Trump has made combating anti-religious bias, particularly against Christians and Jews, a cornerstone of his second term. His recent posts, they said, make it clear that concern seems to apply only to certain groups.<\/p>\n State Senator Zaynab Mohamed, a Democrat who is the youngest woman ever elected to the Minnesota Senate and its first female Muslim member, said she did not believe that Mr. Trump would have posted the video if it showed any other religious group.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine if these kids were children who were wearing yarmulkes,\u201d she said. \u201cImagine the reaction people would have. We would all be angry because we should be, because they are just as American as anyone else. And these kids who are wearing a hijab are just as American as the child who goes to a Catholic school that wears a particular uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n National advocacy groups that have tracked the rise of Islamophobia said Mr. Trump\u2019s posts were part of a trend of normalizing anti-Muslim hate and demeaning rhetoric that has led to violence<\/a> and could lead to more.<\/p>\n