President Donald Trump removed a social media post late Thursday that contained racist imagery depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as cartoon apes, but said Friday night that he would not apologize for sharing it.
The roughly one-minute video largely promoted false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Near its conclusion, the video abruptly cut to the edited ape imagery set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said he had only watched the beginning of the video before it was posted.
“I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” Trump said. “I looked in the first part and it was really about voter fraud … 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.”
Trump said the video was taken down once the offensive content was discovered. “We took it down as soon as we found out about it,” he said.
A White House official told NBC News that the post was shared in error by a staff member and was removed shortly before noon Friday.
While Trump said he condemned the racist imagery, he insisted he had done nothing wrong.
“Of course” he condemns the racist portions, Trump said, but added, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
The post drew swift bipartisan criticism. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the only Black Republican in the Senate, called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House” and publicly demanded its removal.
Trump later said he spoke with Scott, calling him “great” and saying that “Tim understood that 100%.”
Other Republicans also denounced the content. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) wrote that “even if this was a ‘Lion King’ meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,” adding that the White House should remove the post and issue an apology.
