US President Donald Trump has removed a social media video which included a racist clip depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes
The clip – set to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight – was at the end of a 62-second video he shared containing claims about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said: “I didn’t make a mistake”. He added he had only seen the beginning of the video before it was posted by a staff member and didn’t know it contained that depiction of the Obamas.
Republican Senator Tim Scott – who is black – had called for the president to remove the post, describing it as “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House”.
The White House initially defended the clip as an “internet meme video” and told critics to “stop the fake outrage”.
But after fierce backlash, including from several Republican senators, the post was removed from Trump’s Truth Social account and a White House official said that a staffer had “erroneously” made the post.
The clip – which recalls racist caricatures comparing black people to monkeys – appears to be taken from an X post shared by conservative meme creator Xerias in October.
That video also depicts several other high-profile Democrats as animals, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden, is also depicted as an ape eating a banana.
The Obamas have yet to comment on the video.
The video was one of dozens posted to Trump’s Truth Social account overnight.
“I look at a lot of thousands of things,” the president said while aboard Air Force One on Friday, adding that after watching only part of the video he “gave it to the people who generally, they look at the whole thing”.
He says he liked the video’s message on voter fraud, but that if his staff had looked at the whole thing, “probably they would have had the sense to take it down”.
“We took it down as soon as we found out about it,” he added.
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