Trump Claims Intern Posted Racist Video, Refuses to Apologize
Trump Claims Intern Posted Racist Video Of The Obamas as Apes, Refuses To Apologize
Late Thursday night, President Trump posted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The video, which was about a minute long, continued the false claim that President Trump would’ve won the 2020 election had it not been for election fraud. At the end of the video there was a clip of the Obamas’ faces superimposed on cartoon apes with the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” sung by The Tokens plays in the background.
On Friday, the video was removed, and President Trump claimed the video was uploaded by an intern. Later that evening, the president was asked about the post and if he planned to apologize to the Obamas.
“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said on Air Force One, adding that he never saw the full video, NBC News reports. “I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.”
The odd part is that initially the White House defended the video, despite members of the GOP taking offense to the video and demanding that the president take it down. The video was removed around noon Friday.
“A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down,” a White House official told NBC News.
Trump didn’t answer why an intern had access to his personal social media and if he planned to fire the person who sent out the video.
“I looked in the first part and it was really about voter fraud in, and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is,” Trump said. “Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they’d look at the whole thing. But I guess somebody didn’t, and they posted,” Trump said.
“We took it down as soon as we found out about it,” he added.
Before the video was taken down, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called the post “Racist. Vile. Abhorrent” in a post on X, adding, “This is dangerous and degrades our country — where are Senate Republicans? The President must immediately delete the post and apologize to Barack and Michelle Obama, two great Americans who make Donald Trump look like a small, envious man.”
Social media has been ripping him apart for days. See the reactions below.
