Donald Trump’s retweet of MAGA fan yelling ‘white power’ set off ‘five-alarm fire’ in White House

President Donald Trump’s retweet of a video of one of his supporters shouting ‘white power’ set off a ‘five-alarm fire’ in the White House as officials scrambled to get him to delete the post.

But White House officials couldn’t reach the president for more than three hours as he relaxed on his golf course in Sterling, Virginia and had put his phone down.

As Trump enjoyed a tranquil day of golf, his Twitter account sparked a social media firestorm, where critics slammed the president for promoting white supremacist message to his 82million followers.

Two officials said that they couldn’t reach the president for over three hours and aides also tried unsuccessfully to reach deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino to ask him to delete the retweet, according to NBC News.

Donald Trump posted a video Sunday morning – and subsequently deleted the tweet – of senior citizen supporters clashing with senior citizen counter protesters in The Village age-restricted community in Florida

‘White Power’: One Trump supporter in the golf cart parade yelled ‘white power’ about eight seconds into the video as he held up a fist at senior-citizen counter protesters by the side of the road 

The pressure to remove the tweet cranked up when Republican Sen. Tim Scott demanded the president delete it during an interview on CNN, slamming the retweet as ‘indefensible’.

‘There’s no question. He should not have retweeted and he should just take it down,’ Scott said on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper. 

Once officials were able to reach the president, he agreed to delete the incendiary post.

On Monday White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that Trump watched the video before retweeting it but didn’t hear his supporter say ‘white power’.

The tweet itself was a video of a retirement community in Florida called the Villages that showed a man driving a golf cart with Trump campaign posters as he chants ‘white power’.

Trump retweeted it saying: ‘Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!’

Two officials said that they couldn’t reach the president for over three hours and aides also tried unsuccessfully to reach deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino to ask him to delete the retweet because Trump put his phone down while golfing. The president pictured golfing on Saturday

‘President Trump is a big fan of the Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters,’ White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a statement after the tweet was deleted.

Officials said that while the president gets lots of content to share from aides and allies, the ‘white power’ incident is a ‘lesson to all of us in the White House to be more aware of what’s out there.’

But the president has previously boasted that he’s eagle eyed when it comes to his social media posts and endorsements.

For example, in April he came under fire for retweeting a post that had the hashtag #FireFauci.

On Monday White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that Trump watched the video before retweeting it but didn’t hear his supporter say ‘white power’

When asked at the time if he noticed that hashtag bashing the nation’s top expert on infectious diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, Trump said, ‘Yeah, I notice everything’.

Former national security adviser John Bolton said on CNN’s State of the Union that there’s a change Trump retweeted the video after seeing a ‘Trump 2020’ sign in it and didn’t pay attention to the audio.  

‘It may be that you can draw a conclusion that he heard it, and it was racist, and he tweeted it to promote the message. It is a legitimate conclusion to draw. It is also entirely legitimate to say he just had no idea what else was in the video other than the Trump sign,’ Bolton said.