US President Donald Trump on Friday refused to apologize for a video posted on his social media account depicting former US president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as monkeys, although he said he condemned the post as the White House shifted the blame to staff.
The video shared on Trump’s Truth Social account late on Thursday night sparked censure across the US political spectrum, with the White House initially rejecting “fake outrage” only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member.
“I didn’t make a mistake,” Trump said on Air Force One late on Friday when asked if he would apologize for the post.
Photo: Getty Images via AFP
Asked if he condemns the racist imagery in the video, Trump replied: “Of course I do.”
Democrats slammed Trump as “vile” over the clip of the Obamas — the first black president and first lady in US history — while a senior Republican senator said the video was blatantly racist.
Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Republican Trump’s 2020 election loss to former US president Joe Biden, the Obamas were shown with their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.
The video, uploaded late on Thursday amid a flurry of other posts, repeated false allegations that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the election from Trump.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially played down the row, saying the images were “from an Internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King.”
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt said in a statement to Agence France-Presse.
However, almost exactly 12 hours after the post appeared on Trump’s account, there was an unusual concession from an administration that normally refuses to admit the slightest mistake.
“A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down,” a White House official said.
Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday, Trump stood by the thrust of the video’s claims about election fraud, but said he had not seen the offensive clip.
“I just looked at the first part ... and I didn’t see the whole thing,” Trump said, adding that he “gave it” to staffers to post and they also did not watch the full video.
There was no immediate comment from the Obamas.
Former US vice president Kamala Harris, who has long condemned Trump’s rhetoric, called out the White House’s backpedaling in a post on X on Friday.
“No one believes this cover up from the White House, especially since they originally defended this post,” she wrote. “We are all clear-eyed about who Donald Trump is and what he believes.”
While Democrats pounced on the post, it was the outrage from some members of Trump’s own Republican Party that appeared to trigger the about-face.
Tim Scott, the only black Republican US senator and once a contender for the 2024 US presidential nomination, called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Scott said he was “praying it was fake” and called for Trump to remove it.
Roger Wicker, another Republican senator, said the post was “totally unacceptable,” adding that “the president should take it down and apologize.”
The top Democrat in the US House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, called Trump “vile, unhinged and malignant” and urged Republicans on X to “immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry.”
Trump launched his own political career by pushing the racist and false “birther” conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was lying about being born in the US.
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