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President Donald Trump\u2019s racist social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted Friday after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as offensive.<\/p>\n
The Republican president\u2019s Thursday night post was blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation\u2019s first Black president and first lady. A rare admission of a misstep by the White House, the deletion came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed \u201cfake outrage\u201d over the post. After calls for its removal \u2014 including by Republicans \u2014 the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously.<\/p>\n
The post was part of a flurry of overnight activity on Trump\u2019s Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite\u00a0courts around the country\u00a0and Trump\u2019s first-term attorney general finding no evidence of systemic fraud.<\/p>\n
Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric \u2014 from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries.<\/p>\n
The post came in the first week of Black History Month and days after a Trump\u00a0proclamation\u00a0cited \u201cthe contributions of black Americans to our national greatness\u201d and \u201cthe American principles of liberty, justice, and equality.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.<\/p>\n
Nearly all of the 62-second clip appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states as 2020 votes were tallied. At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two jungle primates, with the Obamas\u2019 smiling faces imposed on them.<\/p>\n
Those frames originated from a separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as \u201cKing of the Jungle\u201d and depicts Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,\u201d Leavitt said by text.<\/p>\n
Disney\u2019s 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,\u201d Leavitt added.<\/p>\n
By noon, the post had been taken down, with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.<\/p>\n
The White House explanation raises questions about control of Trump\u2019s social media account, which he\u2019s used to levy import taxes, threaten military action, make other announcements and intimidate political rivals. The president often signs his name or initials after policy posts.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how posts are vetted and when the public can know when Trump himself is posting.<\/p>\n
Mark Burns, a pastor and a prominent Trump supporter who is Black, said Friday on X that he\u2019d spoken \u201cdirectly\u201d with Trump and that he recommended to the president that he fire the staffer who posted the video and publicly condemn what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,\u201d Burns posted.<\/p>\n
Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told The Associated Press she does \u201cnot buy the White House\u2019s commentary.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there wasn\u2019t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn\u2019t see this type of behavior regardless of who it\u2019s coming from,\u201d Clarke said, adding that Trump \u201cis a racist, he\u2019s a bigot, and he will continue to do things in his presidency to make that known.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump and White House social media accounts frequently\u00a0repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did Friday, Trump allies typically cast them as humorous.<\/p>\n
This time, condemnations flowed from across the spectrum \u2014 along with demands for an apology that had not come by late afternoon.<\/p>\n
At a Black History Month market in Harlem, the historically Black neighborhood in New York City, vendor Jacklyn Monk said of Trump: \u201cThe guy needs help. I\u2019m sorry he\u2019s representing our country. \u2026 It\u2019s horrible that it was this month, but it would be horrible if it was in March also.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Atlanta, Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father\u2019s words: \u201cYes. I\u2019m Black. I\u2019m proud of it. I\u2019m Black and beautiful.\u201d Black Americans, she said, \u201care beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The U.S. Senate\u2019s lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. \u201cPraying it was fake because it\u2019s the most racist thing I\u2019ve seen out of this White House,\u201d said Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans\u2019 midterm campaign arm.<\/p>\n
Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post \u201ctotally unacceptable\u201d and said the president should apologize.<\/p>\n
Some Republicans who face tough reelections this November voiced concerns, as well. The result was an unusual cascade of intraparty criticism for a president who has enjoyed a stranglehold over fellow Republicans who stayed silent during previous Trump\u2019s controversies for fear of a public spat with the president or losing his endorsement in a future campaign.<\/p>\n
NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the video \u201cutterly despicable\u201d and pointed to Trump\u2019s wider political concerns that could help explain Republicans\u2019 willingness to speak out. Johnson asserted that Trump is trying anything to distract from economic conditions and attention on the\u00a0Jeffrey Epstein case files.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know who isn\u2019t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a long history in the U.S. of powerful white figures associating Black people with animals, including apes, in demonstrably false, racist ways. The practice dates to 18th century cultural racism and pseudo-scientific theories used to justify the enslavement of Black people, and later to dehumanize freed Black people as uncivilized threats to white people.<\/p>\n
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text \u201cNotes on the State of Virginia\u201d that Black women were the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight Eisenhower, discussing school desegregation in the 1950s, suggested white parents were rightfully concerned about their daughters being in classrooms with \u201cbig Black bucks.\u201d Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primates on T-shirts and other merchandise.<\/p>\n
In his 2024 campaign, Trump said immigrants were \u201cpoisoning the blood of our country,\u201d language\u00a0similar to what Adolf Hitler\u00a0used to dehumanize Jews in Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n
During his first White House term, Trump called a swath of majority-Black, developing nations \u201cshithole countries.\u201d He initially denied saying it but\u00a0admitted in December 2025\u00a0that he did.<\/p>\n
When Obama was in the White House, Trump pushed false claims that the 44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump, in interviews that helped endear him to conservatives, demanded that Obama prove he was a \u201cnatural-born citizen\u201d as required to become president.<\/p>\n
Obama eventually released birth records, and Trump\u00a0finally acknowledged\u00a0during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii. But immediately after, he said, falsely, that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton started the birtherism attacks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Trumps #racist #post #Obamas #deleted #bipartisan #backlash<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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