Following intense outrage over Donald Trump’s posting of a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle as apes, the White House has now taken down what many Social media users described as a ‘vile, unhinged’ clip.
Multiple outlets cite a senior Trump official as saying, “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.”
Before taking down Trump’s Truth Social repost of the racist clip, which was up for 12 hours, the White House had initially tried to brush off the furious outrage, defending Trump’s repost as “an internet meme video”.
Responding earlier in the morning to requests for comments from various media outlets, the White House had tried claiming the President’s post was fake. It further defended the post and mocked the media for highlighting the scandal.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Karoline Leavitt said earlier.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public”, she said.
But things dramatically changed around midday on Friday as the post went down from the Truth Social account with the White House’s admission that posting it had been a mistake by a staffer
This is as reports indicated that politicians from both parties not only condemned the post, but had also urged Trump to remove it. Citing a source familiar with the matter, CNN reported that GOP lawmakers had called Trump privately to discuss the issue with him.
Though only a few Republicans openly spoke out about clip in which Obamas’ faces were superimposed on bodies of apes, Democratic outrage led to the video with racist imagery of Obamas being deleted from Trump’s social media
Top Democrats had erupted with fury on Friday, challenging more Republicans to respond to the clip that appeared during one of the 79-year-old US President’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account.
The video showed 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.
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.
With none of the Republicans’ congressional leadership speaking out, 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.”
Also, 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.”
In his reaction, Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat and the Senate minority leader, posted 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.
His post said: “Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
On his part, Podcaster Ben Rhodes, the former Deputy National Security Adviser during the Obama administration, criticized the President’s rightwing Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.
“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.
Rhodes included another post, from Republicans Against Trump, featuring an image of the frame at the end of the video with the Obamas and the comment: “BREAKING: Trump just posted a video on Truth Social that includes a racist image of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. There’s no bottom.”
Republicans Against Trump has more than 1m followers on X and is an alliance of party members disillusioned with the Trump administration.
