As Trump’s inner circle shrinks and there are fewer and fewer people around him to advise against his vile impulses, his racism and bigotry are getting more and more overt. Today he retweeted a far right “comedian” who falsely described a video of Rep. Ilhan Omar as “partying on 9/11.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday used his Twitter account to boost a baseless smear claiming that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) danced at an event last week on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, a claim that’s based on footage that wasn’t actually taken from that day.

Trump’s tweet circulated a video from conservative personality Terrence Williams, in which Williams declared that Omar “partied on the anniversary of 9/11.” In his video, Williams comments on footage of the Muslim congresswoman dancing and fumes that she’s disrespecting the memory of the Sept. 11 attacks.

But the footage of Omar dancing actually came from a Sept. 13 event hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus and wasn’t taken on the 11th, as Williams and Trump wrongly claimed. 

IIhan Omar, a member of AOC Plus 3, will win us the Great State of Minnesota. The new face of the Democrat Party! https://t.co/aQFEygSa4D

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 18, 2019

The video is now deleted, but Twitter told the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer that they did not delete it.

Deleted or not, it did its intended job — to get the smear out there, where it will now be repeated endlessly by right wingers all over the internet. And the president* of the United States helped it happen.