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Donald Trump on Friday deleted a social media post that included a racist meme depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys, following a sharp reaction from within the Republican Party.
The US president posted a video on his Truth social account hours ago, casting doubt on the legitimacy of his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, which ended with imagery of Obama as a primate and music from the film. lion king.
Obama’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The clip was condemned with intense aggression across the political spectrum, increasing pressure on Trump to withdraw it and putting the White House on the defensive.
Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina and the longest-serving black member of Congress, wrote on Twitter: “This prayer was fake because it is the most racist thing I have seen in this White House. The President should remove it.”
Pete Ricketts, a Republican senator from Nebraska, also wrote on X: “Even though it was a lion king Meme, a sane person sees the racist context in it. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove it and apologize.
The White House’s initial response to the widespread outrage about the meme was to dismiss it, with Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt telling reporters to “stop the fake outrage and report today on something that really matters to the American public”.
But by late morning the White House said the post had been removed. “A White House staffer posted it by mistake,” an official said.
Trump refused to apologize for the meme on Friday night, saying he “didn’t see the whole thing.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “I see many, many thousands of things. I saw it at the beginning, it was OK.”
While the administration has tried to limit the meme’s fallout, it could cause lasting damage to Trump at a time when he is suffering from weak polling numbers nine months before the midterm elections.
When he won his second term against Kamala Harris in 2024, Trump made some significant gains in support among black and Hispanic voters, but some polls have shown that he has since lost ground with those groups.
The major civil rights organization, the NAACP, wrote on Twitter: “Trump’s posting of this video… is a stark reminder of how Trump and his followers really view people. And we’ll remember that in November.”
Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia said: “The spiritual rot of our country is coming from the White House.”
“I am calling on all decent and honorable people to condemn this brazen racism,” said Warnock, who is also a senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. once preached.
Additional reporting by Claire Jones
