The president Donald Trump refused to apologize on Friday for a video posted on your account social networks that showed Barack y Michelle Obama as apesalthough he said that he condemned this publication that according to White House was responsibility of a staff member.
The video shared on the account Trump en Truth Social Thursday night sparked criticism across the U.S. political spectrum. Initially the White House described the reactions as “false indignation“, and then blame a member of the team for this post and delete it.
“I didn’t make a mistake,” he said. Trump aboard Air Force One on Friday night when asked if he would apologize for the post.
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When asked if he condemned the racist images from the video, Trump responded: “Of course it is“.
The one-second meme appeared inserted into a video that Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, with conspiracy theories about the 2020 electionswho lost to the Democrat Joe Biden.
“A member of the White House staff made the post in error. It has since been removed,” a government official told AFP.
Trump said Friday that he “didn’t watch” the entire video before posting it.
“I only saw the first part… and I didn’t see the whole thing“Trump told reporters, adding that he “passed it on” to his team to publish it and that they didn’t see it complete either.
The image is actually part of another satirical video, apparently created by a Trump supporter, in which the Republican president appears as a lion, king of the jungle, and numerous politicians, including the Obamas, as animals paying homage to himor that they play clowns.
Addicted to social networks, Trump usually republishes all kinds of videos, documents and memes, some created with artificial intelligence, whether humorous or not..
Leading Democratic figures condemned the post as “racist.”
“Please stop the false outrage and publish something today that really matters to the American public,” Trump’s spokesperson asked in a statement sent to AFP.
In the early hours of Friday, The video had received several thousand likes on the president’s social platform..
The Obamas have not spoken until now.
The former vice president Kamala Harris, who has frequently condemned Trump’s divisive racial rhetoriccriticized the White House’s pushback in a post on X on Friday.
“No one believes this cover-up by the White House, especially given that they originally defended this publication,” wrote the former Democratic candidate who lost the presidential election to the Republican.
“We are all very clear about who Donald Trump is and what he believes in,” he added.
Reactions
The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate and prominent Trump critic, lashed out at the post.
“Disgusting behavior by the president. Every Republican must denounce it. Now,” Newsom’s press office account wrote on X.
An African-American Republican senator, Tim Scott, a Trump supporter, also reacted negatively.
“I pray it’s false, because it’s the most racist thing I’ve ever seen come out of this White House. The president should take it down,” he asked in X.
Another Republican senator, Roger Wicker considered it “totally unacceptable” and asserted that “the president should withdraw it and apologize.”.
Ben Rhodes, former top national security adviser and close confidant of Barack Obama, also condemned the images.
“Americans of the future will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while he [Trump] They will study it as a stain on our history,” he wrote in X.
Conspiracy
Obama is the only black president in the history of the United States and he supported Harris in the 2024 campaign.
Trump has long maintained a bitter rivalry with Obama (2009-2017), and has shown particular anger at the Democrat’s popularity and the fact that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In the first year of his second term in the White House, Trump has stepped up his use of hyper-realistic but AI-engineered images on Truth Social and other platforms, often glorifying himself while mocking his critics..
Last year, Trump released an AI-generated video showing Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and then behind bars.
He later posted an AI clip of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a fake mustache and charro hat. Jeffries called the image racist.
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