President Donald Trump ended a daylong silence Friday after a storm of bipartisan criticism erupted over a social media post that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One while traveling from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, Trump was pressed about the now-deleted post.
“The White House says that a staffer sent it. Who sent it and are you going to fire them?” one reporter asked.
Trump replied, in part: “No. I looked at it. I saw it, and I just looked at the first part … I didn’t see the whole thing.” He later added, “I gave it to the people,” and “they posted” it.
Why It Matters
Earlier in the day, the White House defended the video as an “internet meme,” before taking it down amid mounting criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.
The clip drew immediate condemnation because portraying Black people as apes or monkeys is a racist trope with a long and deeply painful history. Lawmakers from both parties demanded the post be removed and called for an apology.
What To Know
Neither Barack nor Michelle Obama has issued a public statement about the video.
Trump was also asked whether he would apologize. He responded, in part: “No, I didn’t make a mistake. I mean, I look at a lot of thousands of things, and I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine … I guess it was a takeoff on The Lion King.”
Nearly all of the 62-second clip appears to be taken from a conservative video that falsely alleges voting-machine tampering in battleground states during the 2020 vote count. Near the end is a brief image of two jungle primates with smiling faces resembling the former first couple superimposed.
Those images were drawn from a separate video previously shared by a prominent conservative meme creator. That earlier video portrays Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts several Democratic leaders as animals, including former President Joe Biden, who is shown as a primate eating a banana.
Trump insisted on Air Force One that the post’s main point was about election claims and that the offensive image at the end was not widely noticed. “It was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud. Nobody knew that was at the end,” he said. “If they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have the sense to take it down.”
He also said he spoke with Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, who wrote in an X post Friday: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
Trump told reporters: “I spoke to Tim Scott, and he was great. Tim is a great guy. He understood that 100 percent.”
What People Are Saying
Political analyst and former Obama adviser David Axelrod wrote on X Friday: “No one apparently told the@PressSec that @POTUS’s racist retweet late last night portraying the Obamas as apes was a staff mistake, because she defended it this AM and accused the critics of ‘phony outrage.’”
The NAACP wrote on X Friday: “Trump posting this video — especially during Black History Month — is a stark reminder of how Trump and his followers truly view people. And we’ll remember that in November.”
What Happens Next
It remains unclear whether the staffer the White House said was responsible for posting the video will face any discipline.
