President Donald Trump shared a racist video on his social media platform Thursday night that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle, then removed it hours later amid bipartisan outrage, including from close allies.
Just before noon, the White House blamed a staffer for the video posted to Trump’s Truth Social account and said the post had been removed. The statement came after serious backlash, including from GOP Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, who called the post racist and said Trump should remove it.
Trump and Scott spoke about the video on Friday morning before it was deleted from the president’s feed, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
The White House had earlier defended the post and downplayed the response to the video, calling it “fake outrage.” But just before noon,“A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” By that time, the video had been up for nearly 12 hours. A GOP Senate official said Republican lawmakers had called Trump to discuss the post with him.
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