At first, the White House said the monkey video referred to a meme. Then it was removed and explained as an error.
A post with a video, featuring the Obama couple as monkeys has been removed from President Donald Trump’s social media site Truth Social
This is what an official in the White House says according to Reuters.
The person explains that the post was made by mistake by an employee under Trump.
In the video, the faces of the Obama couple are briefly seen on dancing monkey bodies in a jungle.
The sequence led to harsh criticism from several politicians who called the video racist.
In a post on X, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, wrote:
– Disgusting behavior of the president. All Republicans should condemn this. Now.
Some Republicans also criticized the video, which addresses allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 US presidential election.
Tim Scott, who is the only black senator in the Republican Party, called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen coming from the White House,” according to AFP on Friday.
The White House initially dismissed criticism of the video.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt sent a statement to the AFP news agency about the video, where she explained the monkey sequence as a reference to a meme.
“It’s from a meme video on the Internet that shows President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters in The Lion King,” Leavitt said in the statement.
“Please stop the fake outcry and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” added the press secretary.
Over the years, Trump has had a strained relationship with Obama.
Last year, Donald Trump shared an AI-generated video of Obama, which showed the former president being arrested in the Oval Office and later in a jail cell wearing an orange jumpsuit.
Barack Obama is the only black president in American history and was in office from 2009 to 2017.
Trump has many times questioned whether Obama was born in the United States, even after the former US president published his full birth certificate in 2011.
Also in December, Trump was accused of racism when he referred to Somalis as “garbage” who should not be in the United States.
/ritzau/
