President Donald Trump’s 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.
The Republican president’s 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’s 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 “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously.
Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries.
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.
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’ smiling faces imposed on them.
Those frames originated from a separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Leavitt said by text.
Disney’s 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt added.
By noon, the post had been taken down, with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.
The White House explanation raises questions about control of Trump’s social media account, which he’s 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.
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.
“He knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,” Burns posted.
Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told The Associated Press she does “not buy the White House’s commentary.”
“If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from,” Clarke said, adding that Trump “is a racist, he’s a bigot, and he will continue to do things in his presidency to make that known.”
This time, condemnations flowed from across the spectrum — along with demands for an apology that had not come by late afternoon.
At a Black History Month market in Harlem, the historically Black neighborhood in New York City, vendor Jacklyn Monk said of Trump: “The guy needs help. I’m sorry he’s representing our country. … It’s horrible that it was this month, but it would be horrible if it was in March also.”
In Atlanta, Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father’s words: “Yes. I’m Black. I’m proud of it. I’m Black and beautiful.” Black Americans, she said, “are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”
The U.S. Senate’s lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” said Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans’ midterm campaign arm.
Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president should apologize.
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’s controversies for fear of a public spat with the president or losing his endorsement in a future campaign.
“You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he said. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
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.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” 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 “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primates on T-shirts and other merchandise.
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 “natural-born citizen” as required to become president.
