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Donald Trump said on Friday evening, after a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes had been posted to his social media account and then deleted, that he had directed aides to post the offensive video but that he hadn’t seen that portion of the clip and he refused to apologize for it.
The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old US president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account, and shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
They appear briefly at the end of a minute-long video made by a third party that amplifies Trump’s persistent but false claim that he won the 2020 election, when in fact he lost to Joe Biden. The conspiracy-theory video is a repost of content stamped with the logo of the website Patriot News Outlet, a site supportive of Trump, a Republican.
Although the White House initially defended the video in a statement from the press secretary, the video was later deleted and reporters were told that it had been posted, without the president’s knowledge, by an aide.
Natalie Harp, an aide to Trump, and a former anchor for the conspiratorial One American News, reportedly has access to the president’s Truth Social account.
As he so often does, Trump undercut efforts by his aides to explain away his own behavior by telling reporters that he did approve posting the video. “I just looked at the first part,” the president said. “I didn’t see the whole thing; I guess during the end of it there was some kind of a picture that people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either. But I didn’t see it, I just, I looked at the first part… then I gave it to the people. Generally they look at the whole thing, but I guess somebody didn’t and they posted – and we took it down.”
Asked if he would apologize, as even Republican officials have suggested he should, Trump bristled. “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” said the president of the racist meme posted on his social media account.
By mid-morning ET Friday, the post had attracted about 5,600 likes but also garnered outrage from both sides of the aisle for the inclusion of such a blatant racist trope about the US’s first Black president and his wife, both Democrats. However only a smattering of Republicans had spoken out and none from the party’s congressional leadership.
Tim Scott, a South Carolina senator, the only Black Republican in the US Senate and a former contender for the party’s presidential nomination , posted on X: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
The White House, earlier in the morning, defended the post and mocked the media for highlighting the scandal. But then around midday on Friday the post was taken down from Trump’s Truth Social account and the White House claimed that posting it had been a mistake by a staffer.
Earlier, Mike Lawler, the Republican congressman from New York, had posted: “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive – whether intentional or a mistake – and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”
Trump’s post just before midnight on Thursday had been quickly condemned by the social media account Republicans against Trump, but GOP leadership voices were not to be heard.
“Why are GOP leaders like [Senate majority leader] John Thune continuing to stand by this sick individual? Every single Republican must immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry,” said Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader and New York congressman, in a post on X.
Jeffries hailed the Obamas as “brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans” and denounced Trump as “a vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder”.
Neither of the top two Republicans in Congress, Thune and Mike Johnson, the House speaker, offered comment, prompting Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and the Senate minority leader, to post on X: “Racist. Vile. Abhorrent. This is dangerous and degrades our country – where are Senate Republicans?
“The President must immediately delete the post and apologize to Barack and Michelle Obama, two great Americans who make Donald Trump look like a small, envious man.”
California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, had been among the first to comment.
“Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now,” his post said.
Trump’s second term of office has been marked with episodes of blatant racism and misogyny. He frequently attacks Ilhan Omar, the Somali American representative, calling her and other immigrants “garbage”, and has unleashed unprecedented attacks on legal and undocumented immigrants.
In almost every instance there has been little to no Republican opposition.
In a statement sent to the Guardian early on Friday, hours before Trump’s post was taken down, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, attempted to brush off the outrage. She linked to a post on X last October by a separate rightwing account, which features a 55-second video from which the Obama clip appears to have been taken. It begins with the Obamas depicted as apes, later shows Biden’s head superimposed on a monkey body and other prominent Democrats depicted as other animals, while Trump is shown as a male lion.
“This is 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.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rejected Leavitt’s response, and called Trump’s video “blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable”.
Derrick Johnson, the group’s national president, said in a statement: “Trump is obviously desperate to distract us from the Epstein files and his rapidly failing economy. You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama. You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
He added: “Voters are watching and will remember this at the ballot box.”
Friday’s post that ends with the Obama flash clip mostly focuses on the false and disproven claims from Trump and the right that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump with doctored vote-counting machines.
The company accepted a settlement of $787.5m from Fox News in April 2023 in a landmark defamation lawsuit.
