President Donald Trump on Friday condemned but declined to apologize for a video posted from his social media account that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes — a dehumanizing trope that drew swift, bipartisan backlash and forced the White House into an unusual retreat.
The minute-long clip, shared late Thursday on Trump’s Truth Social account, amplified false claims that his 2020 defeat stemmed from election fraud. Near its end, the video spliced in what appeared to be an AI-generated scene of dancing primates with the Obamas’ faces superimposed.
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“I didn’t see the whole thing,” Trump told reporters. “I looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud in the machines.” Asked if he condemned the clip, he said, “Of course I do.” He refused to apologize, adding, “I didn’t make a mistake.”
The White House first defended the post as a harmless “internet meme,” then deleted it roughly 12 hours after it appeared, saying it was uploaded in error by a staff member. The reversal marked a rare step back for an administration that typically stands firm behind the president’s social media output.
A spokesperson for the Obamas declined to comment. The White House would not identify the staff member involved. Only a small number of senior aides have direct access to Trump’s account, according to a Trump adviser and a person familiar with internal process. A Trump adviser said the president had not viewed the full video before it was posted and ordered it removed once he did.
The episode prompted condemnation from Democrats and several Republicans. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., a Trump ally, wrote on X that he was “praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” and urged the president to remove it. Other Republicans privately pressed the White House to take down the video, according to a person familiar with those conversations.
Mark Burns, a Black pastor and Trump ally who said he spoke with the president about the matter, called for the staffer who posted the clip to be fired. Ben Rhodes, a former Obama aide, wrote on X: “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.”
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt initially defended the post, saying it drew from a meme portraying Trump as “the King of the Jungle” and Democrats as characters from The Lion King, and noted the clip’s use of a song from the Disney musical. After criticism mounted, a White House official said the post had been taken down because it was posted erroneously.
Civil rights advocates said the video echoed centuries-old efforts by white supremacists to depict people of African descent as monkeys or apes in order to dehumanize them. “Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable,” Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, said in a statement. “Voters are watching and will remember this at the ballot box.”
Trump has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric about race. He championed the false “birther” conspiracy about Obama’s citizenship, used coarse language to describe certain African and Caribbean nations, and last year shared an image of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is Black, with a superimposed handlebar mustache and sombrero. In December, he described Somalis as “garbage” who should be removed from the country.
The post has renewed questions about the White House’s protocols for managing Trump’s online presence on Truth Social, where he frequently unveils policy, elevates fan-made content and comments on world events to nearly 12 million followers. Trump has criticized his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for allowing memos bearing his name to be distributed and signed by “autopen.”
Trump told reporters the video included end images that “people don’t like” and said, “I wouldn’t like it either.” The White House has not detailed any changes to its social media review process since the post’s removal.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
