Donald Trump has refused to apologise after a video was shared on his Truth Social account depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes – saying “I didn’t make a mistake”.
The depiction appeared towards the end of the video, asserting debunked claims that the 2020 election – which he lost to Joe Biden – was stolen from him.
Posted on Mr Trump’s own social media network, the two-second clip shows the Obamas as apes bobbing up and down to the tune of The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
The post was later deleted – around 12 hours after being shared.
A White House official said a member of staff “erroneously made the post” and it had now been taken down.
Later, while onboard Air Force One, the US president said that “of course” he condemned the racist parts of the video, but told journalists he would not apologise, and did not say whether he would fire the staffer who posted it.
“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said, adding that he didn’t see the full video. “I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.”
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He then said: “I looked in the first part and it was really about voter fraud in, and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is.
“Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they’d look at the whole thing. But I guess somebody didn’t, and they posted. We took it down as soon as we found out about it.”
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‘Every single Republican must denounce this’
The post sparked widespread outrage from across the political spectrum, while the White House’s response was also criticised.
Kamala Harris, Mr Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2024 presidential election, said: “No one believes this cover-up from the White House, especially since they originally defended the post.
“We are all clear-eyed about who Donald Trump is and what he believes.”
In a message on X, formerly Twitter, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, accused the president of “disgusting behaviour” over the post.
He added: “Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
Responding to the video, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X: “Racist. Vile. Abhorrent. This is dangerous and degrades our country-where are Senate Republicans?”
Mr Schumer urged the US president to apologise to the Obamas, calling the couple “two great Americans who make Donald Trump look like a small, envious man”.
Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, reacted to the video by calling Mr Trump “a stain on our history”.
“Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,” he wrote on X.
George Conway – ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway, who managed the president’s successful election campaign in 2016 – responded by highlighting an article he’d written describing Mr Trump as a “racist” in 2019.
The group Republicans Against Trump wrote: “There’s no bottom.”
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White House initially criticised ‘fake outrage’
Before the post was removed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended it and said the depiction formed part of a longer video depicting various politicians as animals.
She said: “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.”
Mr Trump has a long history of attacking Mr Obama, his predecessor as president, and was a vocal proponent of the “birther” conspiracy theory.
The theory cast doubt on Mr Obama’s birth in Hawaii, asserting that he was actually born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to hold the office of president.
Mr Obama produced his long-form birth certificate in 2011. In 2016 Mr Trump publicly accepted that his predecessor was born in the US.
