President Donald Trump shared a racist video on his social media platform Thursday night that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle, then removed it hours later amid bipartisan outrage, including from close allies.
Just before noon, the White House blamed a staffer for the video posted to Trump’s Truth Social account and said the post had been removed. The statement came after serious backlash, including from GOP Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, who called the post racist and said Trump should remove it.
“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 South Carolina Republican, who’s also the chair of the Senate GOP campaign committee, wrote on X.
The White House had earlier defended the post and downplayed the response to the video, calling it “fake outrage.” But just before noon, an official told CNN, “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” By that time, the video had been up for nearly 12 hours. A GOP Senate official said Republican lawmakers had called Trump to discuss the post with him.
And it sent the White House into major damage control mode, sources said, with officials, advisers and allies reaching out to lawmakers and the media to try to dispute that Trump himself played any role. One White House adviser asserted that, “The president was not aware of that video, and was very let down by the staffer who put it out.” Another ally sought to place blame on a specific aide.
The Obamas briefly and suddenly appear near the end of the short video, which promotes false claims that voting machines helped steal the 2020 election, with their faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes. As the images appear, for about one second, the start of the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background.
The Gamutt Blog 